RELEASE DATE: 3/11/2026
UPDATED
More than three months after the Mega Millions® jackpot was last won in New Jersey on December 2, the game gets its first jackpot win in 2026. A single ticket sold in Illinois matched all six numbers drawn Tuesday night – the white balls 16, 21, 30, 35 and 65, plus the gold Mega Ball 7 – to win the $536 million prize ($245.6 million cash). The final jackpot amount is a bit higher than the estimated value, as it is based on actual sales. One of the founding members of Mega Millions, Illinois has won or shared in 17 jackpot wins over the years.
It’s only the second time in Mega Millions history that the first jackpot won in a given year wasn’t until March. In 2024, a March 26 jackpot of $1.128 billion was taken by a New Jersey player. That was the first of just four jackpots won in 2024 – the fewest in any single year since the game began in 2002.
Over the 28 drawings in this jackpot run, there were nearly 7.7 million winning tickets sold. They include 18 second-tier prizes ranging from $2 million to $5 million, won in 13 different states: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Also during this run, there were 185 third-tier prizes ranging from $20,000 to $100,000, won in 31 states across the country (Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin).
In total, players won almost $209.4 million in prizes during this run, not including the jackpot. Those enhanced prizes are a key feature of the game changes almost a year ago.
Note: Prize amounts in California will vary, as they are calculated on a pari-mutuel basis.
In the March 10 drawing alone, there were a total of 415,980 winning tickets at all prize levels, plus the single jackpot-winning ticket. Two tickets matched the five white balls for the game’s second-tier prize: A Maryland ticket won $4 million and an Illinois ticket won $5 million. Seven tickets matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball to win the game’s third-tier prize: three at $20,000 (Michigan, Texas and Washington), two at $30,000 (Georgia and Texas), and one each at $40,000 (Nebraska) and $50,000 (Illinois).
Find complete drawing results here.
The jackpot was won six times in 2025, in Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio and Virginia.
See the complete Mega Millions jackpot history.
The jackpot for the next drawing on Friday, March 13, resets to its starting value of $50 million ($22.9 million cash). Since the game began in 2002, the Mega Millions jackpot has been won seven times on a Friday the 13th. Four were won in Michigan (June 2008, May 2011, June 2014, and one shared with Rhode Island in October 2017). The game’s third-largest prize to date ($1.348 billion) was won in Maine on January 13, 2023. Friday the 13th jackpots were also won in New York in March 2009 and in Ohio in November 2015.
About Mega Millions
Mega Millions is the only lottery game that has awarded seven jackpots exceeding $1 billion to individual ticket-holders in seven different jurisdictions across the country: Florida, South Carolina, New Jersey, Maine, Illinois, Michigan and California. The game’s record jackpot is a $1.602 billion prize won in Florida on August 8, 2023.
Tickets are sold in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tickets are $5 each and include a randomly assigned multiplier, multiplying the base prize levels by 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X or 10X. 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 23; the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 290,472,336.
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