Tickets for the Mega Millions lottery are getting a mega price hike.
Beginning April 2025, the cost of a Mega Millions ticket will go up from $2 to $5 — marking a 150% increase.
That’s just one of many upcoming changes to the game that officials hope will result in improved jackpot odds, more frequent giant prizes and even larger payouts.
“Spending 5 bucks to become a millionaire or billionaire, that’s pretty good,” said Joshua Johnston, director of the Washington Lottery and lead director of the group that oversees Mega Millions.
As it now stands, the odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot stands at around 1 in 302.6 million. But lotto officials hope that increasing ticket revenue and rejiggering the odds will yield more major jackpot wins — even as prizes grow extraordinarily high — which, will in turn, attract more players.
The upcoming change marks only the second price hike since Mega Millions was launched more than 20 years ago. In 2017, the cost jumped from $1 to $2, matching the price of a Powerball ticket. That’s also when Mega Millions implemented its current format of selecting six total numbers from two separate pools, all of which have to match, including the gold Mega ball, for a player to win the jackpot.
In the years since, the jackpot has ballooned past the billion-dollar mark six times, most recently in 2023, when a Florida ticket-holder won $1.6 billion. Three of the lottery’s top 10 biggest-ever jackpots occurred this year alone.
Additional changes to Mega Millions will include the end of “breakeven prizes,” meaning that every winning ticket will be more than the $5 cost. Even more updates are slated to be announced in the coming months as part of the lottery’s “mega overhaul.”
“We expect more billion-dollar jackpots than ever before, meaning creating more billionaires and many more millionaires as the jackpots climb,” Johnston said, “plus this game will continue the important legacy of supporting great causes everywhere Mega Millions is played.”
Powerball officials meanwhile have said they have no plans to change their game’s odds or the $2 price for most tickets.
Mega Millions is available to play in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., and the US Virgin Islands. Drawings occur on Tuesday and Friday nights at 11 pm ET.
With News Wire Services
