Jackpot Surges Past $1 Billion

RELEASE DATE: 7/29/2023

For the fifth time in its history, Mega Millions® will offer a jackpot in excess of a billion dollars! After no ticket matched all six numbers drawn Friday night – the white balls 5, 10, 28, 52 and 63, plus the gold Mega Ball 18 – the estimated jackpot grows to $1.05 billion ($527.9 million cash) for the next drawing on Tuesday, August 1. That prize would equal the fourth-largest Mega Millions jackpot to date.

The jackpot has been rolling since it was last won in New York on April 18, and Tuesday’s drawing will be the 30th in this current run.

With excitement over the rising jackpot, the number of prizes won across the other eight prize tiers keeps growing. In the July 28 drawing, there were a total of 3,157,597 winning tickets across all tiers. Of those, 586,903 included the optional Megaplier (available in most states with an extra $1 purchase), which multiplies all standard non-jackpot prizes by a factor of 2x to 5x; Friday night’s Megaplier was 5x. In the current Mega Millions matrix and Megaplier configuration, which has been in place since October 28, 2017, there has never been a Megaplier of 5x drawn at this extraordinary jackpot level. That means a lot of prizes in other tiers have been multiplied by a factor of five!

They include a big $5 million winner in Pennsylvania, one of five tickets nationwide that matched the five white balls for the game’s second-tier prize. Another Pennsylvania ticket takes home the standard $1 million prize in the July 28 drawing, along with tickets in Arizona, California and New York.

Across the country, 92 tickets matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball to win the third-tier prize. Fourteen of those tickets are worth $50,000 each, because they also included the optional Megaplier. The other 78 win the standard $10,000 each.

Since the last jackpot was won on April 18, there have been a total of more than 26.4 million winning tickets at all non-jackpot prize levels, ranging from $2 up to $5 million. These include 46 second-tier prizes of $1 million or more, won in 22 different jurisdictions from coast to coast: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin.

This year started out with six jackpot winners in less than four months – a number far more typical of a full year and indicative of the truly random nature of lottery drawings! The first was a big one – $1.348 billion won in Maine on January 13, the second-largest prize awarded in Mega Millions history. That was followed by three quick wins. The very next drawing, on January 17, produced a $20 million win in New York. Two drawings later, $33 million was won in Massachusetts on January 24, and just two drawings after that, Massachusetts repeated with another jackpot win, this time at $31 million. Then came two more wins in New York, at $483 million on April 14 followed by $20 million on April 18. That was the first time in Mega Millions history that two jackpots have been won in the same state in consecutive drawings.

See the complete Mega Millions jackpot history.

Mega Millions is the only lottery game that has awarded four jackpots exceeding $1 billion – one each in 2018, 2021, 2022 and 2023; one more will soon be added to the mix. Tickets are sold in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tickets are $2 each; in most jurisdictions, players can add the Megaplier for an additional $1 to multiply their non-jackpot prizes. Drawings are conducted at 11 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesdays and Fridays in Atlanta, Georgia.

Half of the proceeds from the sale of each Mega Millions ticket remains in the state where the ticket was sold, where the money supports designated good causes and retailer commissions.

The top Mega Millions jackpots to date: