Markets 
The Mega Millions jackpot shot up to $800 million as no player won the grand prize for Friday’s drawing, continuing the four-month winless drought that propelled the prize to the tenth-highest in the game’s history.
Friday’s winning numbers were 2, 5, 42, 44 and 60, and the gold Mega Ball 1 for the $743 million prize, officials announced.
No players had all five white balls, but 13 tickets matched four of the white balls and the gold Mega Ball to win prizes ranging from $20,000 to $40,000, depending on the chosen multiplier.
California led the pack with five third-tier winners, followed by two players each in Florida and Ohio, along with lucky winners in Georgia, South Carolina, Idaho and Missouri.
Mega Millions has gone 37 consecutive drawings without a winner. The last jackpot winner was The Happy Trails Trust, who won $60 million in Van Wert, Ohio on March 17.
The chances of winning the jackpot are 1 in 290,472,336.
The jackpot, worth an estimated $800 million, is the largest prize that the game has had since November 14, 2025, when a Georgia ticketholder won the $983 million payday, currently the eighth-largest total in history.
The winner, who remained anonymous, chose the one-time cash sum of $453.6 million before taxes.
Mega Millions players have only struck gold twice in 2026 with the Happy Trails Trust win and a week earlier when an anonymous online player in Illinois won the $536 million grand prize on March 10.
The game is on pace to have the fewest jackpot winners in a given year, as only two grand prizes have been won up to July 24, the same amount of top prizes won in 2024 to this point.
That year saw four total jackpot winners, according to game officials.
Lottery players looking to cash in on one of the largest prizes in history have their next shot at glory on Tuesday.
The Mega Millions isn’t the only lottery with a historic prize on the line, as the Powerball jackpot sits at an estimated $600 million for Saturday night’s drawing.
Powerball hasn’t seen a jackpot winner since May 2, when two tickets in Florida and Texas matched the winning numbers for the $20 million prize.
The split winners came in the drawing after two other players, in Indiana and Kansas, split the $143.4 million prize for the April 29 drawing.
It was the first time Powerball had back-to-back jackpot winners since 2021.
Read the full article here
