Mega Millions will draw the third-largest jackpot in its 20-year history on Tuesday, with an estimated total prize of $830 million on the line.
The next drawing will be at 11 pm ET on Tuesday. Mega Millions is drawn twice a week on Tuesday and Friday evenings, including holidays, from the studios of WSB-TV in Atlanta. The drawing is supervised by the Georgia Lottery, one of 12 state lotteries in a consortium that manages Mega Millions.
“We’re very excited about tonight’s $830 million jackpot,” Ohio Lottery spokesman Mike Bycko told US Gaming Review on Tuesday. “The last jackpot to hit in Ohio was on December 17, 2019, when a $372 million winning ticket was sold at a Giant Eagle in Mentor.”
Mega Millions is available in 45 states, the District of Columbia, and the US Virgin Islands (USVI). It is unavailable in Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, or Utah. The game is also unavailable in Puerto Rico, although the island has access to Powerball.
Besides Georgia and Ohio, the other 12 state lotteries in the consortium that manage Mega Millions are from California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Virginia, and Washington state.
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Two Ways to Get Paid
Jackpot winners have two options to collect their prizes. They can receive the entire jackpot in 30 annual installments, with each payment 5% larger than the previous one. Or they can elect to receive a one-time, lump-sum payment equal to all the cash in the prize pool.
For Tuesday night’s drawing, the cash option was valued at approximately $487.9 million by midday Tuesday. The cash value is sure to go up in the final hours before the drawing.
Players have nine ways to win in Mega Millions, with prizes ranging from $2 to the jackpot. Most of the 47 jurisdictions that offer the game also offer a Megaplier option for an extra $1. Under Megaplier, a non-jackpot prize can be increased by 2, 3, 4, or 5 times.
No Jackpot Winner in Three Months
That said, there hasn’t been a Mega Millions jackpot winner in more than three months.
The last time someone won the jackpot was April 15, when a player in Tennessee matched all six numbers to claim a prize worth $20 million in total, with a cash value of $11.9 million.
Since then, Mega Millions has held 28 prize drawings. In that time, nearly 21.4 million winning tickets at all prize levels have been sold, including 33 worth $1 million or more. Mega Millions jackpots start at $20 million — ticket sales and interest rates add to the jackpot, as do rollovers. The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 303 million.
Mega Millions is a different game than Powerball, run by the non-profit Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL). Powerball is available in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the USVI. Since August 2021, Powerball has been drawn three times a week, a Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday evenings.
Top 10 Mega Millions Jackpots
| Rank | Jackpot | Date | Where Winning Ticket(s) Sold |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1.537 billion | October 23, 2018 | SC | |
| $1.05 billion | January 22, 2021 | MI | |
| $830 million (estimated) | July 26, 2022 | ??? | |
| $656 million | March 30, 2012 | IL, KS, MD | |
| $648 million | December 17, 2013 | CA, GA | |
| $543 million | July 24, 2018 | CA | |
| $536 million | July 8, 2016 | IN | |
| $533 million | March 30, 2018 | NJ | |
| $522 million | June 7, 2019 | CA | |
| $516 million | May 21, 2021 | PA |
