News writer
Virginia just hit the jackpot — literally. One lucky ticket sold in a small town turned into a life-changing fortune, setting a new record and sending Mega Millions fever surging across the state.
It's not only Virginia's biggest win ever in the game, but it also marks a major milestone in a year already buzzing with massive lottery payouts. So, who scored big, where did it happen, and what makes this jackpot even more historic than it seems? Let's break it all down.
Biggest Mega Millions jackpot in state history
Virginia had a big reason to celebrate over the weekend, as a single ticket purchased in Burgess matched all six of the numbers drawn during the Friday, June 27, drawing to win the $348 million jackpot. Those winning numbers were 18, 21, 29, 42, and 50, and the Mega Ball was 2.
The winning ticket was purchased at E & C VA, located at 14878 Northumberland Highway in Burgess. Now the lucky ticket holder has to choose between taking either annual payments over 30 years for the full jackpot amount or taking a one-time cash option of an estimated $155.5 million before taxes.
Virginia happened to be one of the six state lotteries that first created the Big Game in 1996, which would later become Mega Millions in 2002. With this jackpot win on Friday, it was the tenth Mega Millions jackpot win in the state's history and the largest Mega Millions jackpot ever won in the state. This also happened to be the first Mega Millions jackpot win in Virginia since 2016.
The fourth jackpot win of 2025
We have made it halfway through 2025 and this win happened to be the fourth jackpot win for Mega Millions players this year. The jackpot had been rolling since the last jackpot win, which took place on April 18 when a ticket in Ohio matched all the winning numbers to win that $112 million jackpot.
This jackpot win in Virginia happened to be the second jackpot won under the new $5 game format, which started with the April 8 drawing. No time was wasted, as the first jackpot winner came just 10 days later on April 18.
Since that last jackpot win, we have seen 20 drawings. Those drawings have produced almost 4.9 million winning tickets across all prize tiers. This has resulted in a total of nearly $120 million in non-jackpot prize winnings.
That total happens to be 4.4 times what those prize values would have been under the previous version of the game. These significantly-increased lower-tier prizes were one of the big selling points for the new $5 price point and it seems to be paying off.
This jackpot run produced millionaires
Besides the $348 million jackpot winner, this latest jackpot run also produced eight multi-million-dollar second-tier prizes. Thanks to the new multiplier rules, we had four tickets winning $2 million (in Colorado, Georgia, Virginia, and Washington), two tickets winning $3 million (in California and Washington), and two tickets winning $4 million (in New Jersey and Tennessee).
In addition to those second-tier prize winners, there were 107 third-tier winning tickets during this run, with prizes ranging from $20,000 to $100,000. These third-tier prize winners won in 31 different states across the country.
Now with this jackpot win, the Mega Millions jackpot resets to its new starting value of $50 million for the next drawing on Tuesday, July 1.
Enjoy playing the Virginia Lottery, and please remember to play responsibly.
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