RELEASE DATE: 12/4/2024
The tenth largest jackpot in Mega Millions® history will be up for grabs in the next drawing on Friday, December 6! After no ticket matched all six numbers drawn Tuesday night – the white balls 52, 60, 61, 66 and 67, plus the gold Mega Ball 23 – the jackpot rolls to an estimated $579 million ($276.6 million cash).
This most unusual jackpot year continues – the only three jackpots won so far in 2024 were all in top-ten territory, and now the game has reached that lofty level yet again. After the first partial Mega Millions year in 2002, there hasn’t been a single year in which all jackpots won reached the top-ten levels in place at the time. That could very well happen this year as 2024 winds down. In addition, to date there have never been fewer than five Mega Millions jackpots won in any given year.
Certainly, 2024 began with a bang when a $1.128 billion prize was won in New Jersey on March 26. It was followed by a $552 million jackpot awarded to an online player in Illinois on June 4 – the largest lottery prize ever won from an online purchase. Most recently, $810 million was won in Texas on September 10. No one has yet come forward to claim the big New Jersey jackpot; that ticket will expire if not claimed by March 26, 2025, and the unpaid prize will revert back to each participating Mega Millions jurisdiction.
While the jackpot rolls, players are winning across all other prize tiers. In the December 3 drawing, there were a total of 948,575 winning tickets at all prize levels. Three tickets matched the five white balls for the game’s $1 million second-tier prize; two were sold in Ohio and one in Wisconsin. Around the country, 18 tickets matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball to win the third-tier prize. Five of those are worth $40,000 each because they included the optional Megaplier (available in most states with an extra $1 purchase), which was 4X Tuesday night; the other 13 take home the standard $10,000 each.
In the 24 drawings of this current jackpot run that began on September 13, there have been more than 14.3 million winning tickets across all prize tiers. These include 38 second-tier prizes of $1 million or more, won in 18 different jurisdictions from coast to coast: California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Note: Prize amounts in California will vary, as they are calculated on a pari-mutuel basis.
Mega Millions is the only lottery game that has produced six jackpots greater than $1 billion. All were won in different states – South Carolina was the first in 2018, followed by Michigan in 2021, Illinois in 2022, Maine in early 2023, Florida last August and New Jersey in March. The Florida prize on August 8, 2023, is the game’s current record jackpot at $1.602 billion.
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. 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.
Drawings are conducted at 11 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesdays and Fridays in Atlanta, Georgia. The overall odds of winning any Mega Millions prize are 1 in 24; the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350.
The top Mega Millions jackpots:
| Amount |
Date |
Winning Tickets |
| $1.602 billion |
8/8/2023 |
1-FL |
| $1.537 billion |
10/23/2018 |
1-SC |
| $1.348 billion |
1/13/2023 |
1-ME |
| $1.337 billion |
7/29/2022 |
1-IL |
| $1.128 billion |
3/26/2024 |
1-NJ |
| $1.050 billion |
1/22/2021 |
1-MI |
| $810 million |
9/10/2024 |
1-TX |
| $656 million |
3/30/2012 |
3-IL, KS, MD |
| $648 million |
12/17/2013 |
2-CA, GA |
| $579 million (est) |
12/6/2024 |
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