40 Drawings, 14.3 Million Winning Tickets: Anatomy of Mega Millions' Longest Jackpot Run

When a Mega Millions jackpot rolls over again and again, it can sound as though nothing is being won. The longest jackpot run in the game's history says otherwise. Between late June and mid-November 2025, 40 drawings went by without a top-prize winner, and across those drawings almost 14.3 million tickets won prizes at other levels.

The run in brief

The run began on June 27, 2025, when a ticket sold in Virginia won a $348 million jackpot. The jackpot then reset to its new starting amount of $50 million, set when the game was redesigned in April 2025. It was next won on Nov. 14, 2025, in the 40th drawing since that reset: a single ticket sold in Georgia matched all six numbers for a prize of $983 million, the eighth-largest jackpot in the game's history. The game described the run as the most drawings in a single jackpot run in its history.

Along the way, the jackpot passed $600 million in October, for only the 11th time in the game's history. The redesign was intended to make jackpots grow faster and become larger more often, and the game estimated that the average jackpot win would exceed $800 million. This run finished above that mark.

What 14.3 million winning tickets means

The lottery's own figures give a useful picture of what happens during a long run. In the 40 drawings, there were almost 14.3 million winning tickets at all prize levels. That averages out to roughly 357,500 winning tickets per drawing, and the final drawing alone produced 1,112,941 winning tickets, plus the one jackpot-winning ticket. A big jackpot attracts more entries, so the number of winners at every level rises with it.

The point is that "no jackpot winner" isn't the same as "no winners." The other eight prize tiers are paid out in every drawing, whatever the jackpot is doing.

Why it takes so many drawings

The odds of winning the jackpot on a single line are about 1 in 290.5 million, and they don't change from one drawing to the next. What changes is how many lines are in play. In the early drawings of a run, with a modest jackpot, relatively few lines are sold, so a drawing without a winner is the usual outcome. As the jackpot grows, sales rise and the chance that at least one line matches rises too. A run of 40 drawings is therefore less a streak of bad luck than the arithmetic of a very large number of combinations.

Drawings versus weeks

The record is counted in drawings, which is worth keeping in mind when comparing games. Mega Millions is drawn twice a week, so 40 drawings covered about 20 weeks. Powerball's record run, 47 drawings, ended in December 2025, but Powerball is drawn three times a week, so that run lasted about 16 weeks. In calendar terms, Mega Millions' run was the longer of the two.

The reset

The Georgia win ended the run, and the jackpot reset to $50 million. It was won again less than three weeks later, on Dec. 2, 2025, by a ticket sold in New Jersey, at an estimated $90 million. It was the shortest jackpot run since August 2023, and the sixth jackpot win of 2025.

In summary

Mega Millions' longest jackpot run lasted 40 drawings, from June 27 to Nov. 14, 2025, and ended with a $983 million win in Georgia. Over the same period, almost 14.3 million tickets won prizes at other levels. A long run says something about how few lines match all six numbers when sales are modest, but it doesn't mean a dry spell for everyone else.