PARIS — Ari Hodara, a 58-year-old sales engineer, won a Pablo Picasso painting worth $1 million in a charity raffle drawn on April 14, 2026, at Christie's auction house in Paris. The raffle, named "1 Picasso for 100 euros," was organized by the Alzheimer Research Foundation to support Alzheimer's research.

All 120,000 tickets, priced at €100 (about $117) each, were sold worldwide, netting 12 million euros (about $14 million) in proceeds. Of that total, 1 million euros will be paid to Opera Gallery, the international art dealership that owned the painting. Opera Gallery founder Gilles Dyan offered the work at a preferential price; its public price was listed at 1.45 million euros.

The painting raffled was "Head of a Woman," a gouache-on-paper portrait painted by Picasso in 1941. Picasso died in 1973.

Hodara described himself as an art amateur fond of Picasso. He bought his raffle ticket over the weekend after finding out about the charity raffle by chance during a meal in a restaurant. "How do I check that it's not a hoax?" Hodara said upon learning of his win. "First, I will tell the news to my wife, who has yet to return from work," he added. "And at first, I think I'll take advantage of it and keep it."

The Alzheimer Research Foundation is based in a Paris public hospital. Since its founding in 2004, it has provided more private funding for Alzheimer-related medical research in France than any other private organization, according to the foundation. The 2026 draw was the third such Picasso raffle.

The first raffle, held in 2013, awarded the painting "Man in the Opera Hat," painted in 1914, to a Pennsylvania man employed in a fire-sprinkler business. The second, in 2020, awarded the oil-on-canvas "Still Life," painted in 1921, to Claudia Borgogno, an accountant in Italy whose son bought her the ticket as a Christmas present. The two previous raffles raised more than 10 million euros for cultural work in Lebanon and water and hygiene programs in Africa.