From 7 October 2026 the Premium Plus earns 1.25 Avios per pound instead of 1.5, and the bonus on British Airways flights and holidays disappears. The headlines will shout about a 58% cut. The more interesting story is what happens next, in January and April.
From 7 October 2026 the British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card will give you 1.25 Avios per pound instead of 1.5, and the triple Avios you used to get on BA flights and holidays is going altogether. You will see plenty of headlines shouting about a 58% cut. Technically true, but honestly that is not even the most interesting bit.
What is really going on is that Amex and BA are quietly nudging the Premium Plus away from being all about Avios and towards being a status card. The Avios earning gets a bit worse in October, but the tier points side actually gets much better in April, and hardly anyone is talking about it. There is also a deadline in January that most people will miss entirely. So here are all three dates in one place, because I have not seen anyone else lay it out like this.
There are three dates worth keeping an eye on, and only one of them is a real deadline.
| Date | What happens | Do you need to act? |
|---|---|---|
| 7 October 2026 | Premium Plus earn rate falls from 1.5 to 1.25 Avios per £1. BA and BA Holidays spend falls from 3 to 1.25. | Only if you have BA spending you can bring forward. |
| 25 January 2027 | Last day to opt in to the current tier point offer. Only spend after you register counts. | Yes. Two minutes, and it is free. |
| 1 April 2027 | Tier points from the card become automatic, rise to a maximum of 3,000 a year, and are earned from the first pound. | No, it happens by itself. |
The middle date is the only real deadline here, and oddly enough it is the one nobody seems to be mentioning.
Three things, all on the Premium Plus.
You will now get 1.25 Avios per pound on general spending instead of 1.5. That is a 16.7% drop, if you are counting.
Spending on British Airways and BA Holidays drops from 3 Avios per pound to 1.25. That is the big 58% cut everyone is talking about, and yes, it does sting a bit, especially since using the card for BA flights was rather the whole point.
Other than that, nothing else is changing. The £300 annual fee is still there, the companion voucher still needs £15,000 of spending, and the voucher rules (including the two-year validity and the any-cabin part) are all the same. The free BA Amex keeps its 1 Avios per pound and is not touched by any of this.
This is per year, depending on how you use the card. I am using the usual rough value of a penny per Avios here.
| Your annual spend | Avios before | Avios after | You lose | Roughly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £15,000, no BA spend | 22,500 | 18,750 | 3,750 | £38 |
| £15,000 plus £1,000 on BA | 25,500 | 20,000 | 5,500 | £55 |
| £15,000 plus £3,000 on BA | 31,500 | 22,500 | 9,000 | £90 |
| £25,000, no BA spend | 37,500 | 31,250 | 6,250 | £62 |
| £25,000 plus £5,000 on BA | 52,500 | 37,500 | 15,000 | £150 |
The pattern is pretty clear. If you use the card for BA flights, this is a bit of a blow. If you are just using it for general spending to get the voucher, you are out about forty quid a year: annoying, but not the end of the world.
Here is what I think is the real story, and it has been completely buried under all the noise about the earn rate.
Today, the tier points from this card arrive at cliff edges. You get 750 when your spending crosses £15,000, another 750 at £20,000, and another 1,000 at £25,000. Two thousand five hundred at the top, and you have to opt in to get any of it.
So right now, if you spend £14,000 on this card, you get exactly zero tier points. Not just a smaller amount, literally nothing. You have to cross the line or you get nothing, and plenty of people end up spending eleven or twelve grand a year and getting absolutely nothing for it.
From 1 April 2027, that all changes. You will get 1 tier point for every £10 you spend, starting from your very first pound, and it is automatic, up to 3,000 a year.
| Annual card spend | Tier points today | Tier points from April 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| £8,000 | 0 | 800 |
| £14,000 | 0 | 1,400 |
| £15,000 | 750 | 1,500 |
| £20,000 | 1,500 | 2,000 |
| £25,000 | 2,500 | 2,500 |
| £30,000 | 2,500 | 3,000 |
If you look at the middle rather than the extremes, someone spending £14,000 a year suddenly goes from nothing to 1,400 tier points, about 40% of Bronze, just for spending you would be doing anyway. That is a much bigger deal for most people than losing a quarter of an Avios per pound, and hardly anyone seems to be talking about it.
The ceiling rises too, from 2,500 to 3,000, so the highest spenders gain 500 points. But it is the removal of the cliff edge, not the higher ceiling, that changes who this card is for.
Until 1 April 2027, the old system is still in place, and you have to opt in for it. Worse, only spending after you register actually counts towards the thresholds.
The enrolment deadline is 25 January 2027. If you have not opted in yet, every pound you have spent this year has earned you nothing in tier points, and the longer you wait, the less time you have. It takes about two minutes in your Amex account and costs nothing. If you do just one thing after reading this, make it that, not anything to do with October.
We have written about this before, because it is the single most common way people quietly lose tier points without noticing, and it is in the free audit along with six others.
Honestly, there is less to do than the internet will have you believe over the next few weeks. Be wary of anyone making a big fuss about it.
This is the real question, and honestly the answer now depends on something a bit different than it used to.
If you ignore the Avios cut for a second, the £300 fee now gets you a companion voucher at £15,000 spend, tier points that (from April) are actually useful even if you are not a huge spender, and 1.25 Avios per pound. The Avios are now the least important of the three.
So the Premium Plus is not really an Avios card with a voucher any more. It is a voucher and status card that happens to earn some Avios on the side. If the voucher is valuable to you, the fee still makes sense and the October changes do not really change that. If you were only keeping the card for the Avios earn rate, it is probably time to do the maths at renewal rather than just letting it roll on.
Figuring out what a companion voucher is actually worth to you is a whole topic in itself. It depends on where you fly, who you are travelling with, and which cabin you are in. I have covered it properly in the companion voucher guide, and there is an even fuller version in the book if you fancy a deep dive.
Nothing changes. The free British Airways American Express Credit Card continues at 1 Avios per pound and is untouched by all of this.
It also does not take part in the current tier point offer, which is just for the Premium Plus. Whether the free card will earn tier points under the new April 2027 rules is not clear yet, and I would rather tell you that straight than guess. I will update this page as soon as it is confirmed.
For the full verdict on whether to keep or cancel, see the BA Amex Premium Plus review, and for every dated change in one place, the programme changes tracker. Last verified: 12 September 2026.
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We decode UK air-miles programmes in plain English, cross-checking every figure against the programmes’ published terms. We are independent and this is general information, not financial advice.