Ben Affleck is now a game show champion. The Oscar-winning actor won the top prize of $1 million on the celebrity edition of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” on July 29, 2026. He teamed up with “Jeopardy!” champion Jamie Ding to take home the grand prize for charity.
The victory puts Affleck in a rare group of winners. Only a handful of celebrity contestants have won the full $1 million jackpot since Jimmy Kimmel became host in 2020. The money will go to Affleck’s nonprofit organization, the Eastern Congo Initiative.
The win happened exactly one year after Affleck’s close friend Matt Damon won the same prize on the same show with “Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings. Damon’s winnings went to his charity, Water.org.
How the Game Played Out
Affleck and Ding first appeared on the Season 5 premiere of the ABC game show on July 22, 2026. Host Jimmy Kimmel guided them through the early rounds. The pair moved through the questions with confidence.
They used their Audience Lifeline at the $32,000 mark on a question about McDonald’s sandwiches. The crowd picked Filet-O-Fish, and the team went with it. The choice proved correct.
Their first episode ended with a tense moment at the $250,000 question. The question asked what men dressed as devils jump over during the Spanish festival El Colacho. Ding leaned toward hot coals. Affleck was confident the answer was babies. He had picked up this fact after researching Spanish customs following Damon’s episode the previous year. Affleck was right, and the team locked in $250,000.
The game paused there for a week. Affleck and Ding returned on July 29 to face the $500,000 and $1 million questions.
The 500,000 Dollar Question
The $500,000 question asked: “What achievement occurred just two months after a New York Times article said it wouldn’t happen for ‘1 million to 10 million years’?”
The possible answers were splitting the atom, cloning a mammal, the first airplane flight, or the polio vaccine. Ding quickly suggested the correct choice was the first airplane flight.
Affleck agreed almost immediately. He recalled reading about the Wright brothers and the newspaper’s coverage of their achievement. The pair used their 50:50 lifeline to eliminate two incorrect answers, leaving splitting the atom and the first airplane flight.
They chose the first airplane flight and advanced to the final round.
The Million Dollar Question
The final question for the $1 million prize was about Thanksgiving turkeys. The question read: “In an annual Thanksgiving tradition, all but which of these have been the names of turkeys pardoned by a U.S. president?”
The four options were:
- Peanut Butter and Jelly
- Tater and Tot
- Mac and Cheese
- Spaghetti and Meatball
Affleck’s reaction was immediate. “You must be kidding me,” he said after hearing the question.
The pair had two lifelines left: Ask the Host and Phone a Friend. Affleck first suggested using the Phone-a-Friend lifeline to call Ding’s friend Stephen Morrison. But then he changed his mind.
“No. We might as well have Jimmy help,” Affleck decided.
Kimmel joked, “Alright, I don’t have to give you any of my f—ing thoughts, if you don’t want.”
Affleck reassured him: “Actually, you’re very good with cooking and food, current events, too. Actually, you might know this.”
Kimmel said he did a bit about pardoned turkeys on his show every year. He suggested the answer was Spaghetti and Meatball. “That one sounds like it wasn’t the one to me,” he said.
Affleck called Kimmel “probably the best person in the world to ask this question to.”
“If I’m wrong, I’m so sorry,” Kimmel said. “But Spaghetti and Meatball is my final answer.”
To be extra safe, the pair still used their Phone-a-Friend lifeline to call Ding’s friend Stephen Morrison. Morrison, a Harvard-educated trivia player, could not guess the correct answer.
Affleck and Ding trusted Kimmel’s instincts. They locked in Spaghetti and Meatball as their final answer.
The chime rang out. They had chosen correctly. Confetti fell as Affleck and Ding jumped up and hugged each other in celebration.
The Charity Behind the Win
The entire $1 million prize will go to the Eastern Congo Initiative, a nonprofit organization Affleck co-founded in 2010 with businesswoman Whitney Williams.
The organization is the only U.S.-based group focused solely on grant-making and advocacy work in eastern Congo. Its mission is to “transform humanitarian aid into a locally driven model by directly funding community-based organizations and advocating for greater international visibility for the region.”
Affleck spoke about his charity on the show. “I’ve been working with them for about 15 years,” he said. “And right now, of course, as I’m sure most people know, there’s an Ebola crisis there, and so this is in large part designed to try to relieve that, contain the spread of Ebola.”
The organization supports locally led organizations to expand access to essential services, strengthen economic opportunities, and promote justice in the region.
Following in Matt Damon’s Footsteps
The win carries extra meaning because it mirrors what Affleck’s longtime friend Matt Damon did exactly one year earlier.
In July 2025, Damon appeared on the same show with Ken Jennings. That duo also won the full $1 million, with the money going to Water.org, a charity Damon has supported for years.
Kimmel joked at the time that it was the least dramatic million-dollar win in the show’s history because of how calm Jennings seemed.
Affleck referenced Damon’s episode throughout his own run. Before the game even began, he joked about “riding” Ding’s coattails, much as Damon had leaned on Jennings the year before.
Kimmel pushed back on the comparison. He noted that Affleck himself is sharp at trivia. During the $500,000 question, Kimmel joked that Affleck was “so much smarter than Matt.”
Who Is Jamie Ding?
Jamie Ding is a law student from Lawrenceville, New Jersey. He built a reputation on “Jeopardy!” earlier in 2026 with a 31-game winning streak.
He finished his run with $885,605 in winnings, placing him among the show’s all-time top earners. His success earned him a spot in the 2027 Tournament of Champions.
Ding’s trivia knowledge proved essential during the game. But Affleck’s own knowledge and instincts also played a key role, especially on the $250,000 question about Spanish customs and the $500,000 question about the Wright brothers.
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A Rare Achievement
Winning the $1 million prize on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” is not common. Since Kimmel became host in 2020, only a handful of celebrity contestants have achieved the feat.
Other winners include Ike Barinholtz and his father Alan Barinholtz in 2024, Oscar Nuñez and Kate Flannery in 2025, and Chef David Chang.
Affleck now joins this exclusive club. The victory adds a game show champion title to his already impressive list of achievements, which includes two Academy Awards.
The episode aired on ABC on Wednesday, July 29, 2026, at 8 p.m. ET.
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