Lottery jackpots are getting bigger and harder to win. See the data on Powerball and Mega Millions’ top prizes.

Lottery jackpots have exploded over the past decade.

When Powerball launched in 1992, the first jackpot was $5.9 million, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association. Now the biggest Jackpot Power Ball recorded is the A price of 2.04 billion dollars won on November 7, 2022.

Mega Millions followed a similar path. Its first jackpot winner in 2002 took home $28 million. Its record price — a A jackpot of $1.602 billion won on August 8, 2023 – ranks among the six largest jackpots won in American lotteries history.

Thirteen of the 20 biggest jackpots have occurred since 2023.

THE the second largest American jackpot ever won it was Christmas Eve 2025: $1.817 billion, in Arkansas.

Here are the biggest American jackpots won before that:

Only five states do not sell lottery tickets: Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah.

Even though the prizes are huge, the chances of winning remain extremely low. Over the past three decades, both games have been redesigned several times. The changes increased jackpots while adding more ways for players to win smaller prizes.

Powerball players choose five numbers from 1 to 69 and one Powerball number from 1 to 26. In 2015, Powerball increased its number of white balls from 59 to 69 and its number of red balls decreased from 35 to 26.

Before the change, the odds of winning the jackpot were 1 in 175.2 million and the overall odds of winning a prize were 1 in 31.85. After the redesign, the jackpot odds became higher, 1 in 292.2 million, while the overall odds of winning a prize improved to 1 in 24.9, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association.

Mega Millions requires players to choose five different numbers from one to 70 and a Mega Ball number from one to 24. A ticket wins the jackpot by matching all six numbers in a drawing.

In 2025, Mega Millions changed its games to offer a larger starting jackpot ($50 million versus $20 million), which “improved the odds of winning the jackpot and overall odds,” according to Mega Millions spokesperson Dan Miller.

“Everyone who wins wins more thanks to the new game’s built-in multiplier that takes all non-jackpot prizes and multiplies them by 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X or 10X,” Miller said in an email. Through Friday, Dec. 5, he said, “there have been 70 drawings in the new game. During that time, players won $531 million in non-jackpot prizes. In the old game, those same prizes would have been valued at $119.8 million. That represents a 343 percent increase in player winnings.”

For example, under the old rules, matching only the Mega Ball was an equilibrium outcome: a $2 ticket yielded a $2 prize. In the new game, this same match now has a built-in multiplier. The minimum prize is $5, which is then multiplied, meaning a player can now win $10, $15, $20, $25 or even $50 instead of just $2.

The odds of winning the jackpot went from 1 in 302.6 million to 1 in 290.5 million. This is because Mega Millions removed the gold Mega Ball from the game, Miller said.

The new game features 24 Mega Balls instead of 25, which improves the chances of choosing the right number combinations to win the jackpot. The overall odds of winning a prize have been reduced from 1 in 24 to 1 in 23.

There’s also more money at stake: Powerball increased the price of a ticket from $1 to $2 in 2012. Mega Millions increased its ticket prices from $1 to $2 in 2017 and from $2 to $5 in April of this year.