True Stories · Verified Amounts

Progressive Win Stories

The people behind the biggest progressive jackpot payouts ever recorded, from the Las Vegas machines of the nineties to the online networks paying tens of millions today. Every amount, date and detail below is drawn from public records and named sources.

The Collection

Nine wins that made jackpot history

Progressive jackpots pool a slice of every bet across thousands of players until one spin takes it all. That mechanism has produced some remarkable true stories: a record set with a 25p spin, a $100 buy-in that returned almost $40 million, and one man who beat odds beyond calculation by winning the same jackpot twice. Here they are, in the order the records fell.

Excalibur Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas
Photo: Eddie Maloney, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

The biggest slot win ever: $39.7 million at the Excalibur

$39,713,982MegabucksExcalibur, Las Vegas21 March 2003

A 25-year-old software engineer from Los Angeles was in town for March Madness, visiting family, when his uncle suggested he try the Megabucks total. He fed about $100 into the machine at the Excalibur, looked away for a moment, and looked back to find the winning symbols lined up. The $39.7 million payout still stands as the largest slot machine win in history, certified by Guinness World Records, and he chose to take it in 25 annual installments. He never gave his name.

Sources: Guinness World Records · Las Vegas Sun
The Las Vegas Strip, where Elmer Sherwin won his first Megabucks jackpot at The Mirage
Photo: Dietmar Rabich, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The man who won Megabucks twice

$4.6M + $21.1MMegabucksThe Mirage / Cannery, Las Vegas1989 & 2005

Elmer Sherwin was 76 when he hit Megabucks for $4.6 million at The Mirage in November 1989, days after the casino opened. Most people would call that a full stop. Sherwin called it a start: he spent the next sixteen years playing for what he described as the prestige of doing it twice, because nobody ever had. In September 2005, at 92 years old, he hit Megabucks again at the Cannery in North Las Vegas, this time for $21.1 million. He remains the only double Megabucks winner, and he gave much of the money to charity, including Hurricane Katrina relief.

Sources: Las Vegas Sun

A 25 cent spin in Helsinki: the record moves online

€17,861,813Mega FortunePaf Casino, Finland20 January 2013

By 2013 the biggest jackpots were no longer only on casino floors. A 40-year-old man in Helsinki, playing NetEnt's Mega Fortune at the Åland-based operator Paf late one Sunday night, hit the pooled Mega jackpot with a wager of 25 cents. The €17.86 million payout smashed the previous online record of around €11 million and earned its own Guinness World Record. It was the moment the online networks proved they could pay out on the same scale as Las Vegas.

Sources: NetEnt
Mega Moolah, the progressive jackpot game behind Jon Heywood's record win

Jon Heywood: a 25p spin, 25 minutes into a new account

£13,213,838Mega MoolahBetway, UK7 October 2015

Jon Heywood, a British soldier from Crewe who had served in Afghanistan, opened a casino account just after midnight and was 25 minutes in when a 25p spin on Mega Moolah landed the Mega jackpot: £13.2 million, a new Guinness World Record for an online slot payout. Asked what he would do with it, his first answer was paying for the best possible medical treatment for his father, who was awaiting a heart and lung transplant. His record stood for over two years.

Sources: SBC News

The anonymous €18.9 million

€18,915,872Mega MoolahGrand MondialSeptember 2018

In September 2018 the Mega Moolah jackpot fell again, and this time it took the all-time online record: €18,915,872.81, won by a player at Grand Mondial Casino who chose to stay anonymous. No press tour, no photographs, just a verified network payout that reset the record books. It is a reminder that behind the famous names on this page, plenty of the biggest winners simply collect the money and quietly carry on with their lives.

Sources: PR Newswire

Canada's biggest online win: CA$20 million at Zodiac

CA$20,059,287Mega MoolahZodiac Casino30 January 2019

On 30 January 2019 a Canadian player at Zodiac Casino hit Mega Moolah for CA$20,059,287, the largest online casino win by a Canadian on record. Zodiac's welcome route into the game famously starts from a $1 deposit, which is part of why the story travelled so widely: the gap between the stake required to be eligible and the amount the network paid out is the entire appeal of progressive play, written in one headline.

Sources: Newswire Canada
Absolootly Mad: Mega Moolah, holder of the Guinness World Record online slot payout of 2021

The €19.4 million Guinness record on Absolootly Mad

€19,430,723Absolootly Mad: Mega MoolahBelgiumApril 2021

In April 2021 the Mega Moolah network paid its largest prize yet: €19,430,723 on Absolootly Mad: Mega Moolah, won by a player in Belgium. Guinness World Records certified it as the largest jackpot ever won on an online slot machine at the time. The game itself is a Mad Hatter tea party with Rolling Reels and a multiplier trail, which made for a surreal pairing with a record-setting payout, and its jackpot wheel is the same four-tier system every network game shares.

Sources: Guinness World Records · Our game guide
Wheel of Wishes, the WowPot game that paid the largest online jackpot in history

The all-time record: €38.4 million on Wheel of Wishes

€38,461,200Wheel of Wishes · WowPotDecember 2023

The current world record belongs to the WowPot network this site covers. In December 2023, Wheel of Wishes paid €38,461,200, roughly double the previous record, and the largest verified online jackpot ever awarded. The WowPot Mega had climbed for months past every previous benchmark before one spin ended it. Every WowPot game on the network contributed to that prize, and every one of them was eligible to pay it.

More: full WowPot win history · Wheel of Wishes guide

June 2026: the drought breaker we tracked day by day

$15,827,028Wheel of Wishes · WowPot7 June 2026

The most recent chapter is one this site reported first-hand. After roughly 627 days without a Mega win, the longest wait in the network's history, the WowPot Mega finally dropped on 7 June 2026 for a reported $15,827,028 on Wheel of Wishes. Our live tracker had counted the drought daily, and our own hourly network monitoring confirmed the reset to the $2,000,000 seed. The climb to the next one is already under way.

More: our full report
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The next story is building right now

Every one of these wins started as a number climbing on a ticker. The WowPot Mega is climbing again today. Follow it on the live jackpot tracker, read the latest jackpot news, or see where the network games are available for your country.

All amounts and dates are as published by the named sources at the time of each win. Venue photographs are used under Creative Commons licences with credit as shown; game artwork is the property of the respective studios and is shown for editorial reference. Progressive jackpots are random: nothing on this page changes the odds of any spin.