British Airways Amex Premium Plus Doubles Its Welcome Bonus To 60,000 Avios

American Express and British Airways have doubled the welcome bonus on the British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card to 60,000 Avios, alongside increased offers on two other cards in the range. The offers launched today, 26 August 2026, and run until 6 October 2026.

That end date is the part worth paying attention to, and I will come back to it.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card - 60,000 Avios when you are approved and spend £6,000 in your first three months. The usual bonus is 30,000, so this is double. The annual fee is £300. Representative 135.7% APR variable.

British Airways American Express Credit Card (the free one) - 10,000 Avios when you spend £2,000 in your first three months, up from the usual 5,000. No annual fee. Representative 29.1% APR variable.

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business Card - 40,000 Avios when you spend £5,000 in your first three months. The annual fee is £250. Representative 104.9% APR variable. This is the only card of the three open to sole traders.

All three close on 6 October 2026. Terms apply, 18+, subject to approval.

You can apply for the personal British Airways Amex cards here, and the business cards here.

The card links in this article are American Express referral links, so we collect referral Avios if you are approved. It costs you nothing. As always, check the bonus shown on screen before you submit any application.

I never take a press release's redemption examples on trust, so I ran them against live pricing. They hold up.

A return World Traveller (economy) flight from London to New York costs 27,500 Avios each way off-peak, so 55,000 Avios plus roughly £120 in taxes and charges for the round trip. Your 60,000 covers it with change left over.

Club Europe is where I would look first, though. London to Paris or Amsterdam in Club Europe is 16,500 Avios each way off-peak, so 33,000 Avios return plus about £30. That leaves you 27,000 Avios spare - most of the way to a second European business class return.

Madrid in Club Europe runs 22,000 Avios each way off-peak, so 44,000 return.

You can check any route yourself with our how many Avios points for a flight tool, and if you want to find the seats, Award Travel Finder searches live award availability across British Airways and its partners.

Here is what makes this offer more interesting than a normal bonus doubling.

The offer closes on 6 October. On 7 October 2026, the Premium Plus card's earn rate is cut:

That second one is the real cut. Losing the BA bonus entirely is a 58% reduction on the exact spending this card was designed to reward. If you book your flights on the card, that hurts.

There is one improvement. From 1 April 2027, tier point earning becomes automatic: 1 tier point per £10 of eligible spend, up to 3,000 per British Airways Club collection year, credited as you spend rather than only when you cross a spending threshold. The cap rises from 2,500 to 3,000. That is a genuine positive, particularly if you are chasing status. Our BA tier point calculator is useful if you want to model where card spend sits alongside your flying.

You have three months from approval to spend £6,000. If you apply on 5 October, almost none of that spend happens at the old 1.5 rate. Every pound goes through at 1.25.

Apply now instead, and roughly six weeks of your spending window sits at the higher rate.

The difference is not enormous, but it is free. £6,000 at 1.5 Avios per £1 is 9,000 Avios. The same spend at 1.25 is 7,500. So applying early is worth up to 1,500 extra Avios on top of the bonus.

In other words: this offer rewards moving early, not waiting for the deadline.

The two personal cards have genuinely different eligibility rules, and this catches people out constantly.

Premium Plus: you qualify as long as you do not currently hold, and have not held, a personal British Airways American Express card in the past 24 months. Holding an Amex Gold, Platinum, Nectar or Marriott card does not block you. Nor does a business Amex.

The free BA Amex: much stricter. You are blocked if you have held any personal American Express card in the past 24 months.

So if you have an Amex Gold or Platinum sitting in your wallet, the Premium Plus bonus is open to you and the free card's bonus is not. Worth checking before you apply for the wrong one.

Supplementary cards on someone else's account do not count against you on either card.

And the rule that will catch out a lot of you: downgrading does not reset the clock. If you took the Premium Plus for an earlier bonus and downgraded to the free BA Amex instead of cancelling, you still hold a personal British Airways American Express card. That rules you out twice over. You currently hold one, and you have held one within 24 months.

This will apply to a fair few readers. The last boosted offer on this card was 50,000 Avios earlier this year, and downgrading to the free card was the sensible way to keep hold of a Companion Voucher without paying £300 again. If that was you, this one is not for you. Cancelling rather than downgrading would not have helped either, because the 24-month clock runs from when you held the card.

Full disclosure: I cannot take this one. I held the Premium Plus for the last 50,000 Avios offer, collected the bonus and the Companion Voucher, then downgraded rather than pay the fee a second time. By Amex's rules that still leaves me holding a personal British Airways American Express card, so I am out on both counts and writing this from the sidelines.

Which is mildly irritating, because 60,000 is the largest bonus I have seen on this card.

Here is where I land. 60,000 Avios for £300 works out at roughly 0.5p per Avios in year one, before you count the Avios you earn on the £6,000 of spend. I value Avios at somewhere around 1p when I redeem well, so the bonus alone roughly doubles your money. That is a good deal by any sensible measure.

But I would not sign up because I think this card is about to be great. It is about to get worse. Six weeks after the offer closes, its headline earning advantage largely disappears. Once the rate hits 1.25 Avios per £1, the gap between this £300 card and the free BA Amex at 1 Avios per £1 is 0.25 Avios per £1 - you would need to spend £120,000 a year for that gap alone to justify the fee.

Which means the Companion Voucher is now doing almost all the work. Spend £15,000 in a card year and you get one, valid two years, usable in any cabin including Club World and First, and it also unlocks additional Club World reward seats when you book with it. Used on a long-haul premium redemption, it can save you well over 100,000 Avios. That is a serious perk and it is untouched by these changes.

So the honest framing is this. Take the 60,000 Avios. Hit £15,000 if you realistically can, and take the voucher too. Then look hard at the card again at renewal, when you are paying £300 for a 1.25 Avios per £1 earn rate and a voucher you may or may not use.

One more thing worth saying plainly: after 7 October, the Barclaycard Avios Plus at 1.5 Avios per £1 becomes the highest-earning Avios-specific card in the UK. It is £20 per month with a 25,000 Avios bonus for £3,000 of spend and an upgrade voucher at £10,000. If your goal is steady Avios earning rather than the 2-4-1 voucher, that is the card I would be looking at. I hold it and I am keeping it.

You can see how the cards compare in our best Avios earning credit cards in the UK guide, and if you run a business, our business credit card recommendations.

Apply if: you have not held a BA Amex in 24 months, you can comfortably clear £6,000 in three months without carrying a balance, and you have a use for a Companion Voucher within two years.

Think twice if: you are chasing the £6,000 with spending you would not otherwise do, or you would be carrying interest. At 29.1% APR variable, interest wipes out the value of Avios very quickly.

Look elsewhere if: your priority is a strong ongoing earn rate rather than the voucher. Barclaycard Avios Plus wins on that from 7 October.

Reward credit cards carry high interest rates. They suit people who clear the balance in full each month. Nothing here is financial advice - check the terms yourself and make sure the product fits your circumstances.

The welcome bonus is 60,000 Avios when you are approved and spend £6,000 within your first three months. This is double the standard 30,000 Avios bonus, and the offer runs from 26 August 2026 to 6 October 2026.

You qualify if you have not held a personal British Airways American Express card in the previous 24 months. Holding an Amex Gold, Platinum, Nectar, Marriott or business Amex does not disqualify you. Downgrading a previous BA Amex rather than cancelling does not reset the 24-month clock.

The general earn rate falls from 1.5 Avios to 1.25 Avios per £1, and spending with British Airways and British Airways Holidays falls from 3 Avios to 1.25 Avios per £1. Separately, from 1 April 2027 the card earns 1 tier point per £10 of spend, up to 3,000 per collection year.

A return World Traveller flight from London to New York costs 55,000 Avios off-peak plus around £120 in taxes and charges. A Club Europe return to Paris or Amsterdam costs 33,000 Avios off-peak plus around £30, leaving roughly 27,000 Avios spare.

After 7 October 2026 the earn rate advantage over the free BA Amex is only 0.25 Avios per £1, so the Companion Voucher does most of the work. It is worth the fee if you spend £15,000 in a card year to trigger the voucher and will use it within two years, particularly on a long-haul premium cabin redemption.

Double the Avios, on a card that is about to be quietly downgraded. That is not a contradiction - it is a reasonable trade if you go in with your eyes open, take the bonus and the voucher, and reassess in twelve months.

Just do not leave it until 6 October. The earlier you apply, the more of your spending window earns at the old rate.

Apply for the British Airways Amex Premium Plus here | Business cards here

Jack