Mega Millions Contact Information

There are nine ways to win in Mega Millions®, and prizes range from $2 all the way to the jackpot. See our How to Play page for details of all prize levels. Remember that if you purchase the Megaplier for an extra $1 (available in most states), your non-jackpot prize is multiplied by that Megaplier; a table summarizing Megaplier payouts is also on the How to Play page.

Mega Millions® is a multi-state lottery game with MEGA jackpots and MEGA fun.

You can play Mega Millions in 45 states plus the District of Columbia and the U. S. Virgin Islands; a total of 47 jurisdictions. See the Where To Play page for details. With millions of people playing, jackpots can roll to even higher levels at a faster rate. You choose six numbers and there are nine exciting ways to win in the game. Until further notice, the starting jackpot will vary based on sales and will be announced before each drawing.

Right here on the official Mega Millions® website. Winning numbers are posted shortly after each drawing. Information on the number of winners is posted on Wednesday and Saturday mornings after Mega Millions lottery security has verified winning ticket sales.

Many individual lotteries offer an email or texting service where you can automatically receive winning numbers after each draw. Find your lottery on our Where to Play page for more information. You can also call a player information telephone number in each Mega Millions state. These numbers are listed on the Contact Us page.

Not at all! In a lotto game like Mega Millions, the order in which the numbers are drawn does not matter. The numbers on your ticket are always shown in numerical order, as are the winning numbers for each drawing as reported here on megamillions.com. That makes them easy to compare.

The history of Mega Millions® is as exciting as playing the game! Following a record $363 million Big Game jackpot in 2000, interest in multi-state games was at an all-time high. And as interest in the multi-state games grew, so did the participants. In May 2002, New York and Ohio joined Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and Virginia to create Mega Millions!

Sales for the country's newest multi-state jackpot game began on May 15, 2002, and the first drawing was May 17, 2002.

It didn't take long for players in other states to join the mega fun! By September 2002, Washington had joined Mega Millions and in December 2003, Texas began offering the game to its players. In June 2005, California became the 12th member, solidifying Mega Millions as the country's most widely played multi-state jackpot game.

On January 31, 2010, 23 more state lotteries joined Mega Millions as an historic cross-selling agreement between Mega Millions and Powerball went into effect.

Today, all American lotteries participate in Mega Millions, including the Virgin Islands Lottery.

Mega Millions® drawings are held Tuesday and Friday at 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time, 10:00 p.m. Central Time, 9:00 p.m. Mountain Time, 8:00 p.m. Pacific Time. Drawings are held at WSB-TV in Atlanta, Georgia. Check with your state lottery for the cut-off time to purchase tickets.

Members of the Mega Millions® group meet every Tuesday and Friday morning to determine the game’s estimated jackpots for the next two drawings. Lottery Directors and finance representatives share their state’s individual sales forecasts during that meeting to estimate the total sales that are projected for those drawings. Those sales estimates are then used to determine the estimated cash value of the jackpots and the advertised annuity values, with the annuity value based on that day’s 30-year U.S. Treasuries rate, which can change day to day. The rate on any drawing day is often different from the rate on the previous drawing day, when the jackpot is first estimated.

If a jackpot prize is not claimed within the required time limit (which varies by state), each participating state in the Mega Millions® game will get back all the money that state contributed to the unclaimed jackpot. Each state uses its unclaimed lottery prizes for different purposes. Contact the lottery where you play to find out how unclaimed prizes are used.