Illinois Ticket-Holder Hits $533 Million Mega Millions Jackpot

After months of build-up, the Mega Millions jackpot has finally been won for the first time in 2026. Since the previous jackpot win on December 2, 2025, a single ticket-holder from Illinois has claimed the $533 million jackpot.

The winning numbers of this drawing consisted of 16, 21, 30, 35, 65, and Mega Ball 7. The win is said to be only the second time in the history of the game where a first jackpot win didn’t occur until March in a fresh calendar year.

Not only this, but this is the largest jackpot win since an anonymous lottery player won $983 million back in November 2025, which was the biggest lottery prize ever awarded in Georgia. It ended a long drought between jackpot winners, with the previous jackpot win happening five months earlier in June. In the latter drawing, $348 million went to a lottery player in Burgess, Virginia. 

The massive jackpot wasn’t the only big prize won in this draw. Two players won second tier prizes and, thanks to  the multiplier, managed to bank bigger prizes. One player won $4 million and another won $5 million.

There were also hundreds of thousands of winners of lower-tier prizes. As a result, we urge all players to check tickets carefully in case you’ve won. All prizes big or small are worth claiming, and you never know what you might have coming. The Mega Millions jackpot winner has one year from the date of the drawing to do this, as per Illinois lottery rules. After this time passes, all prizes expire.

As we move into April, it will be a whole year since the multi-state draw game launched with its “bigger and better” revamp in which prizes in all non-jackpot tiers increased and the jackpot minimum blew up to $50 million. 

Get tickets for the next Mega Millions drawing on Friday 13th, and see if you can turn an unlucky date into a lucky one. All you must do is pick five main numbers between1 and 70, and a single Mega Millions number between 1 and 24. The odds of hitting the jackpot are 1 in 290,472,336.

Published: Wednesday, March 11, 2026