The Millionaire Ball pool runs only 1 to 5, so one ticket in five matches it by chance alone. That feels like an edge and is not one. The five main numbers still come from a pool of 58, and matching the Millionaire Ball on its own pays nothing at all.
The game at a glance
5 of 58 + Millionaire Ball
Every day
United States
1 in 22,910,580
The same for every possible combination, including this one.
All divisions →
1 of 5
Millionaire Ball: you pick it yourself, drawn from a separate pool.
18+
Must be 18+ to play Millionaire for Life in most states, 19+ in Nebraska and 21+ in Iowa.
Millionaire for Life, in brief
Millionaire for Life is a nightly multi-state draw game run by the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL) across 31 jurisdictions. A play costs $5 and asks you to pick five numbers from 1 to 58 plus one Millionaire Ball from 1 to 5. That second pool is unusually shallow. Five possible values, against 26 for the Powerball and 25 for the Mega Ball.
Drawings run every night at 11:15 p.m. Eastern, produced in Des Moines by a certified random number generator rather than ball machines. Nothing rolls over. The top prize is a fixed $1,000,000 a year for life with a minimum guaranteed payout of 20 years, or $18 million taken as one cash payment. Second prize is $100,000 a year for life, or $2.2 million in cash.
The game exists because MUSL merged two older lifetime-prize draws into one. Cash4Life and Lucky for Life both held their final drawings on 21 February 2026, and Millionaire for Life took over the following night. Every prize below the top two is a fixed cash amount rather than a pari-mutuel share, so the $7,500 and $500 tiers pay the same whether one ticket wins them or four hundred do.
Prize tiers
5 numbers + Millionaire BallJackpot
The top prize: $1,000,000 a year for life, guaranteed for at least 20 years, or $18,000,000 as a single cash payment
5 numbers, no Millionaire Ball
$100,000 a year for life, guaranteed for at least 20 years, or $2,200,000 in cash
4 numbers + Millionaire Ball
A fixed $7,500
4 numbers, no Millionaire Ball
A fixed $500
3 numbers + Millionaire Ball
A fixed $250
3 numbers, no Millionaire Ball
A fixed $50
2 numbers + Millionaire Ball
A fixed $25
2 numbers, no Millionaire Ball
A fixed $8
1 number + Millionaire Ball
A fixed $8
Where Millionaire for Life came from
The two games it replaced
Cash4Life came first, launched by the New York and New Jersey lotteries with an opening drawing on 16 June 2014 and a top prize of $1,000 a day for life. Lucky for Life is older still. It started in Connecticut in 2009 as Lucky-4-Life, spread across New England from 2012, and settled into a 5-of-48-plus-Lucky-Ball format in January 2015. Both moved to nightly drawings as they grew.
The February 2026 merger
MUSL announced in October 2025 that both games would end and a single replacement would take their place. The final Cash4Life and Lucky for Life drawings were held on 21 February 2026. Millionaire for Life drew for the first time the following night, 22 February 2026. Thirty-one jurisdictions signed on at launch, among them Mississippi and West Virginia, neither of which had ever sold either predecessor.
Who did not join
Not every state followed. Delaware, Florida, Maryland, and Missouri declined to move across at launch, which left them without a lifetime-prize draw game once the older two stopped. The Florida Lottery told its players plainly that the Cash4Life draw game had ended on 21 February 2026, and gave them 180 days to claim outstanding tickets. Coverage may widen later, as it did for both predecessors.
Picking numbers, honestly
A nightly draw means 365 chances a year, which some players read as the numbers working through their turn. They do not. Sunday's result has no bearing on Monday's, and a number that has sat out three months is exactly as likely as the one drawn last night.
A prize for life is not open-ended generosity. The annuity carries a minimum guarantee of 20 years, so an estate collects the balance if a winner dies early, and it keeps paying past 20 years only while the winner is alive. The cash option settles the whole thing at $18 million.
Millionaire for Life — frequently asked
An annuity of $1,000,000 a year, guaranteed for at least 20 years and continuing for as long as the winner lives. The alternative is $18,000,000 paid once. Second prize works the same way at $100,000 a year, or $2.2 million in cash.
No. The lowest paying combination is one main number plus the Millionaire Ball, which returns $8.
Both ended on 21 February 2026. MUSL folded them into Millionaire for Life, which drew for the first time the next night. Delaware, Florida, Maryland, and Missouri chose not to carry the new game, so those states dropped lifetime-prize draws instead of switching.
It holds the top-prize odds at 1 in 22,910,580 while keeping the bottom tiers frequent: one main number plus the Millionaire Ball comes in roughly once every 16 plays. A Powerball-sized bonus pool of 26 would have stretched the jackpot odds past 119 million.
Not for winning. Every set of five numbers from 58 has the same 1 in 4,582,116 chance before the Millionaire Ball is counted. Numbers 32 to 58 are chosen less often because so many players use birthdays, so a jackpot on them is less likely to be split. That changes the size of a win, not the chance of one.