Somewhere in Canada there may be a forgotten slip of paper worth 40 million Canadian dollars, and its owner has until midnight on Wednesday to find it. Ontario’s provincial lottery operator, OLG, has spent close to twelve months hunting for nearly a year for whoever holds the winning Lotto Max ticket from the draw of October 28, 2025.
A shop in Grey County sold it, a holiday area on Georgian Bay that takes in Owen Sound, Meaford and The Blue Mountains. That is part of the puzzle, the OLG believes: holidaymakers and weekend visitors flock there, so the lucky player may well live elsewhere and simply never checked after driving home. Anyone wanting to check should look for 6, 14, 17, 19, 26, 43 and 45 plus bonus 27.
The corporation knows precisely where the ticket was bought but not who bought it, and any claim will go through a review before money changes hands. Spokesman Tony Bitonti told CTV News the organisation had been waiting for close to a year and called it a shame that the ticket was never scanned on the app or at a store. Players have been told to rummage through jackets, bags, cars and kitchen drawers one last time.
If no one comes forward, the jackpot will not vanish. The money is recycled into extra prize draws and promotional games for other players. Ontario has seen this before: a C$70m prize from a 2022 draw in Scarborough was never collected, even though around 2,700 people phoned or emailed claiming it might be theirs.
According to Atlantic Lottery, about one prize in a hundred is never collected, though usually far smaller ones. The timing is especially painful because only last week a player in Alberta won C$90m, the biggest lottery jackpot in Canadian history.
