RICHMOND (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Starting April 5, the Virginia Lottery will start selling tickets for a new Mega Millions game. Virginia Lottery Executive Director Khalid Jones says the new Mega Millions will have a larger starting jackpot of $50-million as opposed to the current $20-million start. The other prizes will also be higher. Jones says there will be a higher price of $5-per-ticket as opposed to the current $2. However, the value will be more as the multipliers for which you now have to pay a dollar extra will be automatically included between 2- and- 10-times.

“Virginians have supported the Mega Millions game since we were one of the game’s founding states in 2002,” Jones says.
“We think our players will be excited by a new and improved version the game.  Virginia has had nine Mega Millions jackpot wins over the years and hopefully will have more in the future. Of course, as with all our games, the profit from the sale of each ticket goes to support our K-12 public schools.”

A full prize matrix is available here on the Virginia Lottery website. Other game enhancements include:

  • Improved odds to win the jackpot – Odds to win the jackpot will improve to 1 in 290,472,336 from 1 in 302,575,350.
  • Improved overall odds – Overall odds to win any prize will improve to 1 in 23 from 1 in 24.
  • Larger starting jackpots – Following a jackpot win, the starting jackpot will reset to $50 million instead of the current $20 million.
  • Faster-growing jackpots and bigger jackpots more frequently – Jackpots are expected to grow faster and reach higher dollar amounts more frequently.
  • Win more than the cost to play – With a minimum prize of $10 on a winning ticket in the new game, every winning ticket will pay out more than the $5 cost for each play. In the current game, the minimum prize on a winning ticket and cost to play are the same: $2.

The increase to $5 is the game’s second price adjustment.

Since Mega Millions launched in 2002, it has produced seven winners of billion-dollar jackpots, all in different states. Since the last change in 2017 more than 1,200 players have become millionaires, an average of three millionaires per week. Mega Millions is played in 45 states, plus Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Drawings are held Tuesday and Friday nights at 11 p.m.

All Virginia Lottery profits go to K-12 education in Virginia. In Fiscal Year 2024, the Lottery raised more than $934 million for K-12 education, making up approximately 10 percent of Virginia’s total K-12 school budget.