The price of a Mega Millions lottery ticket will be going up next spring, along with an individual player’s odds of hitting the jackpot, the lottery announced Monday.

In April 2025, Mega Millions is introducing its first changes to the way the lottery is run since 2017, including the price bump.

In a release, Mega Millions said that in addition to better odds to win, jackpots will also start at a higher baseline, increase in amount faster and ultimately grow to a larger dollar amount.

The current odds to win a Mega Millions jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350. The most recent win was an $810 million ticket sold in Texas and drawn on Sept. 10. The current jackpot amount is up to $129 million.

There will also be multipliers for every Mega Millions play, which will increase the winnings of players who do not hit the jackpot by two, three, four, five or 10 times, up to as much as $10 million for five matching white balls.

The update is only the second price increase since Mega Millions launched in 2002. The current cost of a ticket is $2 with a multiplier available for an extra $1, and the tickets are available in 45 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. They are not sold in Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah.

Since the last time the Mega Millions format was changed in 2017, there have been six tickets worth over $1 billion drawn, most recently with a ticket sold in New Jersey in March 2024. Over 1,200 people have become millionaires through the lottery since 2017, Mega Millions said.

“We are creating a game that both our existing players and people new to Mega Millions will love and get excited about playing. We expect more billion-dollar jackpots than ever before, meaning creating more billionaires and many more millionaires as the jackpots climb,” Mega Millions Consortium Lead Director Joshua Johnston said.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.