Avios Black Friday 2026: Triple Avios Shopping, 30% Off Buying Avios and a 95% Avios Shop

Black Friday has officially reached the Avios world. IAG Loyalty, the company that runs Avios, has just announced its Avios Black Friday offers: up to triple Avios when you shop online with selected retailers, 30% off buying or gifting Avios, bonus Avios from The Wine Flyer, and a permanent change that lets you pay for up to 95% of an Avios Shop product with points. Some of this is genuinely useful. Some of it, in my view, is a quiet way to drain your balance at a poor rate. Here's how I'd split the two.

WHAT // Until 21 December, Avios is offering up to three times the usual Avios with selected retailers when you click through from the 'Collect Avios' section of the Avios website or app. You search for the brand, click through to its normal website, and pay as usual - the Avios land later for eligible purchases. The headline rates IAG Loyalty is highlighting are:

Argos and Currys are also in the mix. Spend £15 or more through the Avios shopping links and you're also entered into a prize draw for one million Avios, which IAG Loyalty says will give five customers a share of the prize to put towards a trip - check the prize draw T&Cs for exactly how it's split.

WHY IT MATTERS // This is the one offer here that costs you nothing extra. If a £200 order at Very was happening anyway, 21 Avios per £1 is 4,200 Avios. Valued at a conservative 1p each, that's £42 back on something you were buying regardless - about 21%. That beats any credit card earn rate in the UK by a long way.

Two caveats. Travel, banking and insurance, utilities and telecoms, and subscription merchants are excluded, and individual retailers can exclude certain products, so read the small print on each store page before you click through. And as ever with shopping portals, a Black Friday "deal" is only a deal if the price is good to start with - check the same item at other shops, and against cashback sites, before you let the Avios decide for you. Our shopping portal tracking tool helps you keep an eye on Avios that haven't turned up yet.

You can also stack card earning on top, because the retailer still takes your card as normal. I hold the Barclaycard Avios Plus and two Amex business cards, so every portal purchase earns twice. If you don't have an Avios-earning card yet, our guide to the best Avios-earning credit cards in the UK covers the options, and Amex currently has boosted welcome offers on its personal cards. See the current Amex welcome offers →

Between 23 November and 7 December, members of The British Airways Club get 30% off the price of gifting Avios - and the same discount applies when you buy Avios for yourself.

A discount is worth a little more than it sounds. 30% off means every £1 buys 1.43 times the Avios it normally would, so it's the same as a 43% bonus. That edges out the 40% bonus BA ran in July.

On BA's standard price list when we last checked, larger bundles cost £19.30 per 1,000 Avios (10,000-49,999), £18.60 (50,000-99,999) and £17.70 (100,000 and over). With 30% off, that becomes roughly:

Prices can change, so check the final figure at checkout before you pay. Then compare it with what the Avios would get you. A Reward Flight Saver to Europe or a business class seat on the right route can return well over 1.3p per Avios. Topping up Avios to buy groceries or gadgets never will.

It's also worth checking the other places you can buy Avios. Qatar Airways and Finnair both sell Avios and run their own sales, and Avios moves freely between BA and Qatar. Our Avios Balance Boost calculator compares BA, Qatar and Finnair side by side, and the how many Avios for a flight tool tells you exactly how short you are for the trip you have in mind.

The gifting side is a nice idea for a points-minded relative, and it pairs well with a Household Account if you already pool Avios as a family.

From this month, you can use Avios to cover up to 95% of the price of products in Avios Shop, up from the previous 25-75% limits. IAG Loyalty says this is permanent, not a Black Friday one-off. The two examples it gives:

Here's the bit the press release doesn't spell out. When the shop moved to a 50% limit in March, the iPhone 17 256GB (RRP £799) was £399.50 + 67,255 Avios. That works out at about 0.59p per Avios.

If today's iPhone 17 is the same £799 model, 170,820 Avios is now covering £754.10 - about 0.44p per Avios. Even if the shop price is higher than RRP, the 5% cash figure implies a price of £898, which still only gets you about 0.5p per Avios. Either way, every extra Avios you put in is worth less than it was in March. A bigger cap is not a better deal.

For comparison, our guide to what an Avios is worth puts a sensible short-haul reward at 0.8p-1p and long-haul business class often at 1.5p or more. You can check any redemption with our Avios value calculator.

There's also a bonus earn on Avios Shop between 18 November and 1 December: 20 Avios per £1 on eligible items priced at £250 or more, and 5 Avios per £1 on Apple products over £250. My reading is that the earn is on the cash you pay, so it helps most if you pay mostly in cash - check the T&Cs before relying on it.

The Wine Flyer, the Avios-powered online wine shop, has two bonus codes on the go:

The £300 tier is the sweet spot. 10,000 bonus Avios on £300 is 33 Avios per £1 on top of The Wine Flyer's normal earn. At 1p per Avios that's £100 of value, a third of the spend. The £125 tier is 20 Avios per £1 - still decent, but clearly the weaker of the two.

The usual Wine Flyer caveat applies: the bonus only makes sense if the wine itself is fairly priced. Compare a few cases with what you'd pay at a supermarket or another merchant first. If you want to see how the Avios stack up across your orders, our Avios wine tracker does the sums. A £300 order is also an easy way to split with friends or family before Christmas.

There are two very different things going on in this press release, and it's worth separating them.

The first is about collecting. Up to triple Avios on online shopping and the Wine Flyer bonuses are Avios given away on spend people make in November and December anyway. That's good news, and I'd use them.

The second is about spending, and here I'd be more careful. Avios Shop letting you pay 95% in points sounds generous. But as the numbers above show, the rate per Avios has dropped since March. The higher cap mostly makes it easier to empty a balance quickly at a rate well below what flights give you. IAG Loyalty calls it a permanent change, so it isn't going anywhere - there's no need to rush into it this Black Friday.

The 30% off buying Avios sits in between. It's a fair price for Avios, and slightly better than July's 40% bonus. But buying Avios speculatively, with no trip in mind, is how people end up with a big balance and nothing to spend it on. If there's a seat you want and you're 20,000 Avios short, this is a good time to close the gap. If not, I'd leave it.

Use: the triple Avios shopping offers for anything you were buying anyway, and the BLACKFRI Wine Flyer code if you'd spend £300 on wine this Christmas.

Consider: 30% off buying Avios, but only for a specific redemption you've priced and can book soon.

Skip: Avios Shop at 95%, unless your Avios would otherwise go unused. Flights are still where Avios earn their keep - use Award Travel Finder to find the reward seats first, then decide whether you need to top up. For more deals as they land, follow us on Instagram.

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

Safe travels,
Jack