The American Express Platinum card's enhanced welcome bonus closes on Tuesday 26 May 2026. That's tomorrow. If you've been weighing the card up since the offer launched on 19 March, this is the deadline before the standard 50,000-point Amex Platinum bonus returns and stays put for the rest of the year.
Apply directly through the Amex website and you'll get 75,000 Membership Rewards points plus a £250 Amex Travel credit after hitting £10,000 of spend in six months. Apply through a referral link and that bonus jumps to 100,000 Membership Rewards points, an extra 25,000 on top, with the same £250 credit and the same spend target.
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What you actually get
100,000 Membership Rewards points via a referral link, or 75,000 going direct
A £250 Amex Travel credit, applied as a statement credit after a single booking of £250 or more at travel.americanexpress.co.uk
Both the bonus and the credit unlock once you spend £10,000 within six months of approval
That £10,000 of card spend also earns another 10,000 base Membership Rewards on top
Membership Rewards transfer 1:1 to Avios, Virgin Points, Flying Blue, Etihad Guest and several other airline programmes. So 100,000 MR is effectively 110,000 Avios in your British Airways Club account once you tack on the 10,000 base points earned hitting the spend. Drop that into our Avios flight cost tool and you'll see it covers a one-way Club Suite to Dubai or New York off-peak (80,000 Avios plus taxes) with change left for a short-haul redemption.
The £650 fee question
This is the bit that makes people hesitate, so let's be honest about it. The Platinum carries a £650 annual fee. The bonus, the credits and the ongoing benefits need to outweigh that for the card to make sense.
The hard-cash benefits in year one:
£200 UK dining credit, paid as £100 per half-year at participating UK restaurants
£200 international dining credit on the same half-year cadence at over 1,500 international restaurants
A free digital subscription to The Times and Sunday Times, added as a benefit in late 2025
Comprehensive worldwide travel insurance for the cardholder and immediate family
Unlimited Priority Pass for the cardholder and a supplementary cardholder, plus eight free UK lounge pre-bookings per calendar year
Complimentary Hilton Honors Gold status upon enrolment
The Hotel Collection: a room upgrade where available plus a $100 on-property credit on two-night-plus stays booked through Amex Travel
Access to Eurostar lounges (and Lufthansa lounges until 1 October 2026, when that benefit ends)
Add the £250 travel credit and £400 of dining credits to the value of the points themselves and year one almost always comes out positive, especially if you'd be paying for travel insurance or lounge access anyway. Amex also refunds the annual fee on a pro-rata basis if you cancel, which keeps the downside genuinely limited if you decide it isn't for you after a few months.
Who is eligible
The Membership Rewards 24-month rule still applies here, but with a quirk that catches people out. Holding a British Airways Amex, a Marriott Bonvoy Amex, a Nectar Amex, or any of the other co-branded cards does not block you from this welcome bonus.
The cards that do disqualify you, if held in the last 24 months, are:
The Platinum Card from American Express
The Preferred Rewards Gold Card
The American Express Rewards Credit Card
Everything else, including the BA Premium Plus, is fine. You'll also need a minimum personal income of £35,000 to apply. If you're unsure where you stand on previous Amex cards, our guide to which Amex welcome bonuses you're still eligible for walks through the rules properly.
My take
I've held the Amex Platinum for a while now. The dining credits are the unsung hero of the Platinum line-up: £400 a year split across UK and international restaurants is hard to ignore if you eat out even semi-regularly, and they're far easier to use now than they were a couple of years ago.
The £10,000 spend in six months is the part to think about carefully. That works out at £1,666 a month, which suits some readers and doesn't suit others. If you're already routing household spend, business expenses or HMRC payments through a points card, sliding that onto a new Platinum during the bonus window is more or less a no-brainer. If you'd be manufacturing spend or stretching budgets to hit it, the maths gets less appealing fast.
The single biggest mistake I see people make is treating the £250 travel credit like a £250 voucher you can spread across multiple trips. You can't. It has to come off one single booking of £250 or more at travel.americanexpress.co.uk, and Amex Travel's prices are not always competitive against booking direct. Use it on a hotel or flight you'd buy regardless, not something you've talked yourself into because you have a credit burning a hole.
The other thing worth being honest about: this is a card that rewards engagement. If you'll log in monthly, register the dining offers, book the occasional lounge pre-booking and remember to actually use the dining credits before each half-year deadline, the value is genuinely there. If you'll set it up and forget about it, £650 is a lot to leave on the table.
How to apply
The 100,000-point version of the bonus requires a referral link. If you'd like to use mine, you can apply here and I'll get a small referral bonus at no cost to you. Your six-month spend clock starts the moment you're approved, not when the card arrives, so plan the application around any larger expenses you've got coming up.
If you're weighing the Platinum against other Amex options, our best Avios-earning credit cards in the UK guide walks through the full personal-card comparison. For the business equivalents, the best Avios-earning business credit cards roundup covers the Amex Business Platinum and Business Gold if you'd rather go that route.
Whichever path you choose, the 100k offer is gone by Wednesday morning. Have you got an application in, or is the £10,000 spend hurdle putting you off?