Amex Platinum Is Capping Priority Pass at 20 Visits - Unless You Spend £30,000

An email from American Express landed in my inbox this morning, and it is the one many of us have been half-expecting. From 1 January 2028, UK Platinum cardholders will no longer get unlimited Priority Pass lounge access as standard. Instead you get 20 free visits a year - unless you put £30,000 on the card in the previous calendar year. Amex lists the lounges in this benefit on its Global Lounge Collection page.

Nothing changes for 2026 or 2027. But the spend that decides your 2028 access starts counting on 1 January 2027 - so this is worth thinking about now, not in 13 months.

WHAT // From 1 January 2028, your Priority Pass access as a UK Platinum cardholder depends on how much you spent on your Platinum Card Account in the previous calendar year:

The first spend year is 2027. Hit £30,000 in 2027 and you keep unlimited access through 2028. Then it resets: 2028 spend decides 2029, and so on.

Spend from supplementary cardholders counts towards the £30,000. Interest, annual fees, other fees and cash-equivalent transactions do not count, and refunds and credits are taken off your total.

WHY IT MATTERS // Unlimited Priority Pass for you and a guest has been one of the main reasons to pay the £650 Platinum fee. For most people, 20 visits a year will still be plenty. But if you fly often, or you rely on the second Priority Pass card for a partner, this is a real cut - and £30,000 a year is a lot of spending to put on one charge card.

What is not changing:

For the full picture of what the card gets you today, see my Amex Platinum UK lounge access guide.

The email is clear on the headline numbers, but it leaves some questions open. I want to be honest about what we don't know yet:

Amex says it will contact cardholders again during 2027 with more detail. I will update this piece when that happens.

£30,000 a year is £2,500 a month, every month. For most households that means putting almost everything through the Platinum card - and Amex is not accepted everywhere.

The question to ask is simple: how many Priority Pass visits do you actually use? One return trip with a lounge at each end is two visits. Twenty visits covers ten return trips a year for the main cardholder, and a Platinum supplementary card adds ten more. If you are below that, the cap changes nothing for you and you should not move spend just to protect a benefit you don't use.

If you are above it, think about where your spend earns the most. Platinum earns Membership Rewards points, which transfer to Avios and Virgin Points - but a business card or a co-brand card might earn more on the same spend. My best Avios-earning credit cards guide compares them. The lounge membership value calculator will help you put a number on your own lounge use.

And as Amex says itself, your spending should reflect your normal needs. Never spend more than you would anyway just to hit a threshold.

I'm not surprised. Amex has already capped Priority Pass on Platinum cards in other European markets - France moved to 15 visits per card in February 2026 - so the UK was always likely to follow. Priority Pass lounges have also become busier, and an unlimited benefit shared by two cardholders and two guests is expensive to run.

What I do like is that Amex has given us more than a year of notice, a clear number, and a way to keep the old benefit by spending. The French version had no such route back to unlimited access that I am aware of.

What I don't like is the direction. In July 2026 Amex cut Centurion Lounge guests from two to one, and now Priority Pass gets a cap. The £650 fee has not gone down. Each change is small, but together they make Platinum less of a no-brainer for the casual traveller - and more of a card for people who put serious spend through it.

For me, the bigger point is this: Amex is starting to pay its heaviest spenders more and everyone else less. That's the US model, and I expect more of it.

If you use fewer than 20 Priority Pass visits a year, this changes almost nothing for you - and Centurion and Plaza Premium lounges stay as they are. If you are a heavy lounge user, start planning now, because your 2027 spend decides your 2028 access.

Don't chase £30,000 for the sake of it. Work out what your lounge visits are worth to you, compare that with what the same spend would earn on another card, and decide from there. I'll update this piece when Amex confirms what happens to Business Platinum and to guests on the capped version. You can also follow along on Instagram.

Thinking about getting Platinum anyway? You still have two full years of unlimited Priority Pass before the change. See the current Amex Platinum welcome offer here - or, if you run a business, see the Amex business card offers.

That's all from me for now. Any questions, just hit reply - I read every email.

Safe travels,
Jack