A Parisian wins a Picasso in the 1 Picasso for 100 euros charity raffle

A Parisian has just won a Picasso painting after entering a charity raffle.

Life can bring pleasant surprises - and sometimes extraordinary ones. This 58-year-old Paris engineer never imagined that a €100 raffle ticket could leave him with a painting valued at more than €1 million. Yet that is exactly what happened.

On Tuesday 14 April 2026, the particularly fortunate Frenchman was selected as the winner of a charity raffle held to fund Alzheimer’s disease research. His was the winning ticket among 120,000 sold across 152 countries. The prize was certainly remarkable: an original Picasso painting estimated at €1.45 million.

A Picasso to win

The charity raffle lives up to its name: 1 Picasso for 100 euros. It is especially welcome news for Ari Hodara, an art enthusiast with a particular admiration for Pablo Picasso. The engineer discovered the raffle by chance last weekend and bought his €100 ticket, despite tickets having been available for several months.

He is now the delighted owner of Head of a Woman, painted by Picasso in the 1950s. The work is a portrait of Dora Maar, the artist’s partner, and has been valued at €1.45 million.

Picasso’s Head of a Woman and Alzheimer’s research

This gouache on paper measures 38.9 cm by 25.4 cm. It remained with Pablo Picasso and his family for many years before entering a private collection, then returning to the market in New York and later Zurich.

Through this raffle, the Alzheimer Research Foundation raised €12 million before purchasing the painting. The money will support its scientific programmes in France and abroad, benefiting European, American and Canadian teams.

The third 1 Picasso for 100 euros raffle

This was not the first edition of the charity raffle, which was created by producer Péri Cochin. In 2013 and 2020, two other lucky entrants won works by the essential Spanish painter for this “negligible” sum. This therefore marks the third Pablo Picasso painting won for just €100.

The first edition of “1 Picasso for 100 euros” raised €5 million for Tyre, a Lebanese city listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 2020, €5.1 million was collected for a project to restore more than 100 wells and sanitation facilities in schools and villages in Cameroon, Madagascar and Morocco. Following an American and an Italian winner, it is now a French entrant who has struck lucky.