Mega Millions players across Southern Maryland have a shot at the largest jackpot the game has offered since last November after Friday night’s drawing again came up empty, pushing Tuesday’s estimated prize to $800 million — the 10th-largest jackpot in the game’s history.
No ticket matched all six numbers in Friday’s drawing — white balls 2, 5, 42, 44 and 60, plus the gold Mega Ball 1 — extending a winless run that now stretches 37 drawings since a ticket in Ohio won the jackpot on March 17. Tuesday’s prize carries an estimated cash option of $344.2 million.
Maryland has been part of the Mega Millions consortium since the game’s earliest days: the state was one of six original members when the game launched as “The Big Game” in September 1996, and Maryland-sold tickets have factored into lottery history before. A $656 million jackpot was split three ways among winners in Illinois, Kansas and Maryland in March 2012, a jackpot that briefly stood as the largest in world lottery history.
Southern Maryland has had its own recent run of lottery success across multiple games, even without a Mega Millions jackpot winner locally. A St. Mary’s County resident claimed a $1.7 million Multi-Match jackpot in March after buying a ticket at a Callaway tavern, and a Charles County store sold a $100,000 FAST PLAY Mega Multiplier winning ticket earlier this year. A North Beach man in Calvert County claimed a $50,000 Powerball prize in May, saying he regularly plays Mega Millions alongside Powerball and Multi-Match with every drawing.
Friday’s drawing produced 500,257 winning tickets across all prize tiers nationwide, worth a combined $10.1 million. Thirteen tickets matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball to win the game’s third-tier prize, which starts at $10,000 and can multiply up to five times with the optional Megaplier add-on: six tickets won at the 2X level, in Florida, California, Georgia, Ohio and South Carolina; five won at 3X, in California, Idaho, Missouri and Ohio; and two won at the 4X level, both in California. Because California runs Mega Millions under pari-mutuel rules rather than fixed prize amounts, winnings there can differ from the standard prize values used elsewhere.
Across the full 37-drawing run since the March jackpot win, more than 10.2 million tickets have won prizes nationwide, totaling almost $252.4 million. That includes 16 second-tier prizes worth up to $4 million and 248 third-tier prizes ranging from $20,000 to $100,000, won across 38 states — including Maryland, according to Mega Millions data.
Tuesday’s $800 million jackpot would rank among the largest in Mega Millions’ nearly three-decade history if won, trailing prizes such as the record $1.602 billion won in Florida in 2023, the $1.537 billion South Carolina jackpot from 2018, and single winners in Maine, Illinois, California, New Jersey, Michigan, Georgia and Texas whose jackpots also topped $800 million.
Only two Mega Millions jackpots have been won so far in 2026: the $60 million prize claimed in Ohio in March and a $536 million jackpot won earlier in the year in Illinois. That makes 2026 just the second year since the game’s 2002 rebrand from The Big Game to feature only two jackpot wins through late July, matching a similarly slow stretch in 2024, which ultimately produced just four jackpots for the full year — the fewest in the game’s history.
Mega Millions tickets cost $5 each and are sold in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands, following a 2025 pricing and format change that raised the ticket price and boosted the odds of winning smaller prizes. Maryland Lottery retailers can redeem prizes up to $600 directly; larger prizes must be claimed through Maryland Lottery headquarters in Baltimore, either in person or by mail, with winners generally given 182 days from the drawing date to come forward. Complete drawing results and prize breakdowns for every jurisdiction are available at megamillions.com.
