Seventeen airline and hotel cards just refreshed welcome bonuses in the past two weeks. JetBlue Premier moved to 100K + a Priority Pass, Citi AAdvantage Globe hit its best-ever 90K, Marriott restructured its Bonvoy Boundless to four 50K Free Night Awards, and Barclays delisted the AAdvantage Aviator Business as AA consolidates under Citi. The full delta with current spend requirements, in one place.
Updated August 1, 2026: Three of the offers below have changed since this piece ran. IHG One Rewards Premier is back to 140,000 points after $3,000 in 3 months — the 185,000-point promo expired. IHG One Rewards Traveler is back to 80,000 points after $2,000 in 3 months — the 125,000-point promo expired. World of Hyatt Business moved the other way: it is now 70,000 points after $7,000 in 3 months, a bigger bonus than the 60,000 described below but with a higher spend requirement. The card-by-card deltas below are a record of the May 2026 refresh cycle and have been left as published.
TL;DR — what moved in the past two weeks:
- Eleven cards bumped welcome bonuses up. Best of the bunch: JetBlue Premier 80K → 100K + Priority Pass, Citi AAdvantage Globe 60K → 90K (its best-ever offer), IHG Premier 140K → 185K, World of Hyatt 30K → 60K (first material refresh in years).
- Five cards moved welcome bonuses down. JetBlue Plus 70K → 60K, JetBlue Business 60K → 50K with spend doubled, Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select 75K → 50K.
- Marriott restructured two cards from point bonuses to Free Night Awards: Bonvoy Business → up to 5 FNAs (50K cap each), Bonvoy Boundless → 4 FNAs (50K cap each).
- Three cards delisted or rebranded: Barclays AAdvantage Aviator Business is now closed to new applicants (AA is consolidating to Citi), Capital One Spark Miles for Business is no longer accepting new applicants, and Hawaiian Airlines World Elite is now an Atmos Rewards card following the Hawaiian/Alaska currency merger.
Every claim below is sourced to the issuer's own product page or press release. We re-verified each card on 2026-05-08.
If you've been holding off on a welcome bonus app waiting for a refresh, this is a busy fortnight. Eleven cards are at or near recent highs. Five are at recent lows — read those carefully if you were planning to apply this month, you may want to wait for the next swing. And two of the most popular hotel cards (Marriott Boundless, Marriott Business) restructured their bonuses entirely, which changes the math on whether they're worth applying.
What follows is the complete, verified delta — sorted by direction (up / down / restructured / delisted) — with current spend requirements, key dates, and the new benefits where they apply. Our welcome bonus advisor tool is updated with all of these as of 2026-05-08, so if you'd rather just enter your spend and let it suggest, start there.
The JetBlue Premier had the most material refresh of any card this cycle. The welcome bonus moved from 80,000 to 100,000 TrueBlue points after $5,000 spend in 90 days, and JetBlue layered new benefits that previously weren't part of the card:
Annual fee is $499 as of our August 1, 2026 re-check — this piece originally reported $99, which was wrong. At $499 the Priority Pass, BlueHouse access and travel credit are the entire argument for the card, so run those benefits against what you would actually use before applying.
Citi pushed the AAdvantage Globe Mastercard to 90,000 AAdvantage miles after $5,000 spend in 4 months — the highest welcome bonus ever offered on this card. (The previous best was 75K; current standing offer pre-refresh was 60K.) The spend requirement and window both went up too: $4K/3mo became $5K/4mo, so net you have an extra month to clear the higher spend.
If you don't already have a Citi AAdvantage personal card on the 48-month rule clock, this is the strongest opening offer in the AA personal portfolio right now. We've got the full breakdown in our Citi AAdvantage Globe Mastercard review.
Chase refreshed the entire United consumer + business co-brand lineup:
| Card | Old bonus | New bonus | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Gateway | 30,000 | 40,000 (tiered) | $0 annual fee |
| United Explorer | 70,000 | 80,000 (tiered) | $95 AF, $0 intro year 1 |
| United Quest | 100,000 | 100,000 + 3,000 PQP | Same headline, PQP added |
| United Club Infinite | 100,000 | 110,000 + 3,000 PQP | $525 AF |
| United Business | 100,000 | 110,000 + 2,000 PQP | $150 AF |
| United Club Business | 100,000 | 110,000 + 2,000 PQP | $450 AF |
The PQP additions on Quest, Club Infinite, Business, and Club Business are the most interesting nuance — Premier Qualifying Points are what United uses to determine elite status, so if you're chasing Silver / Gold / Platinum / 1K, the bonus PQP can shortcut the qualification. If a co-brand credit card isn't an option for you right now, our United MileagePlus Debit Rewards Card piece covers a no-credit-check way to still earn United miles.
Heads-up on the United Business: our database had the annual fee listed at $0 from a prior period when the fee was waived. The current fee is $150, with a $0 intro for year 1 only. If you'd budgeted around $0, factor in the $150 from year 2.
The IHG portfolio had simultaneous bumps:
For context, IHG points historically redeem at roughly 0.5–0.7 cents per point at IHG-brand hotels (Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental, Six Senses, Regent, Kimpton, Vignette, etc.). That 125K promo worked out to roughly $625–$875 in hotel value at no annual fee — one of the strongest no-annual-fee hotel co-brand bonuses we had tracked. It has since expired: as of our August 1, 2026 re-check the Traveler is back to 80,000 points after $2,000 in 3 months, or roughly $400–$560 in hotel value, still with no annual fee.
The standard World of Hyatt Credit Card had been stuck at 30,000 World of Hyatt points for an unusually long time. It just moved to 60,000 World of Hyatt points — its first material increase in years.
Hyatt points redeem strongly: cat-1 properties from 3,500 points/night, cat-4 standard from 12,000 points/night. Our Hyatt category chart breaks down where the best sweet spots sit across every tier. 60,000 points covers 5 cat-4 nights or roughly 2 cat-7 nights — meaningful real value for a $95 fee card.
While the Premier got a major upgrade, the lower JetBlue cards moved the wrong way:
If you were planning to pair the Plus and Business with the Premier for the JetBlue stack, the Premier is now the standout — the other two are at their weaker offer levels and probably worth waiting for a swing back up.
The Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select moved from 75,000 miles after $4,000 in 3 months to 50,000 miles after $2,500 in 3 months. Spend dropped from $4K to $2,500, but the bonus dropped harder — net negative.
If you have flexibility on timing, the AAdvantage Globe at 90K is the much stronger Citi-side offer right now. The Platinum Select is at recent lows.
The Citi AAdvantage Business World Elite moved from 75,000 / $5,000 / 5 months to 65,000 AAdvantage miles after $4,000 in 4 months. Lower bonus, lower spend, shorter window — and net the bonus reduction outweighs the spend reduction.
This is the one mixed bag in the "down" column:
If $10K in 3 months wasn't realistic for your business spend, that May offer was materially easier to actually clear — even if the bonus was 25% lower. Net assessment depended on your monthly spend velocity. That offer is gone: as of our August 1, 2026 re-check the card is at 70,000 points after $7,000 in 3 months — a bigger bonus than the May version, with spend landing between the $10,000 it was before May and the $5,000 it dropped to.
This is the most consequential structural change of the cycle. Marriott rolled out new Free Night Award caps across the Bonvoy portfolio (50K cap, raised from the prior 35K cap), and reformatted two welcome bonuses from raw point totals to FNAs.
Old bonus: 3 Free Night Awards (35K cap each) after $3,000 in 3 months. New bonus: 4 Free Night Awards (50K cap each) — 3 FNAs after $3,000 in 3 months, plus a 4th FNA after $4,000 total in 4 months.
Anniversary cert cap also raised from 35K to 50K, which is a meaningful ongoing boost — if your typical Marriott redemption is in the 36K-50K band (a lot of category 4-5 properties at standard or off-peak), the higher cap means your annual cert covers nights it previously wouldn't.
Old bonus: 200,000 Marriott Bonvoy points after spend. New bonus: up to 5 Free Night Awards (50K cap each) — 3 FNAs after $6,000 in 6 months, plus 2 more after $9,000 total in 6 months.
5 × 50K = up to 250,000 points of effective value if you're booking property-tier matches close to the cap. That's a stronger headline than the prior 200K-point format — but only if you actually use the FNAs at 40K+ properties. If you typically redeem Bonvoy points for category 1-3 stays, the FNA-heavy format may be less flexible than raw points.
The shift also means the welcome-bonus-clear math changes: under the old format, $6K of spend earned a flat 200K. Under the new format, $6K earns 3 FNAs (up to 150K-equivalent) and you need an extra $3K to unlock the 4th and 5th. Most cardholders will realistically clear the first tier; the second tier is genuine "stretch."
Barclays has stopped accepting new applications for the AAdvantage Aviator Business. American Airlines is consolidating its co-brand portfolio under Citi, and the Barclays personal card (Aviator Red) is in the same wind-down (no public application page since late 2025). Existing cardholders keep their accounts open; no new sign-ups.
If you were planning to apply for the Aviator Business, your replacement option is the Citi AAdvantage Business World Elite Mastercard (above — currently at 65K bonus / $4K spend / 4 months, recently reduced).
Capital One has discontinued Spark Miles for Business for new applicants. The current Cap One business card lineup is the Venture X Business, Venture Business, and VentureOne Business — the Spark family is being phased out. Existing Spark Miles cardholders are unaffected for now; no new sign-ups.
Following the Hawaiian Airlines / Alaska Airlines merger, the HawaiianMiles loyalty currency was retired and replaced with Atmos Rewards. The card itself is still the Hawaiian Airlines World Elite Mastercard at the issuer level, but the welcome bonus and earn rates are now denominated in Atmos Rewards points:
If you have an open HawaiianMiles balance, it's already been ported. The card application page on the issuer site now references Atmos Rewards as the earning currency.
A few practical observations:
We've updated the welcome bonus advisor, the airline cards browser, and the hotel cards browser to reflect every change above. The purchase optimizer also now uses the corrected United Business annual fee ($150, not $0).
Each card was checked on 2026-05-08 against:
Editorial policy on this site is first-party sources only — we don't cite third-party credit-card review sites. If a number on this page disagrees with what a card review site published yesterday, the issuer page is what we follow, full stop. If the issuer page changes after publication, we re-verify and update — see the verification timestamps in our card data layer.
Issuers cycle bonuses on roughly 6-12 week windows. Most cards see 3-5 distinct welcome bonus offers per year. "All-time high" offers tend to recur once or twice annually if at all, so when one shows up (the Citi AAdvantage Globe at 90K and the IHG Premier at 185K in this May 2026 cycle — both since expired), the timing matters.
American Airlines elected to consolidate the AAdvantage co-brand portfolio under Citi. Barclays remains a major issuer in other partnerships (JetBlue, Hawaiian/Atmos, Wyndham, AARP) — just not AA going forward. Existing Aviator cardholders are unaffected, but no new applications are being accepted.
The fee has been $150 for some time — what changed is that our card database had it incorrectly listed at $0 from a prior period when the fee was temporarily waived. We've corrected it. If you applied during the waiver period, your account terms didn't change; only new applicants pay the $150. Year-1 intro fee is $0.
The Brilliant (Amex, $650 fee) didn't change in this refresh cycle. Bonvoy Bevy (Amex, $250 fee) and Bonvoy Bold (Chase, $0 fee) also held steady. Only the Boundless and the Bonvoy Business restructured. For another top-tier hotel card, see our guide to the Ritz-Carlton credit card.
We don't predict issuer cycles, but historically bonuses at recent lows reset upward within 6-12 weeks. The AAdvantage Platinum Select has already swung back up (see the bonus tracker for its current terms). The JetBlue Plus and JetBlue Business are still at the reduced offers described above. We'll update this article and ping the bonus tracker when they do.
The site's bi-weekly card verification sweep catches changes within 2 weeks of the issuer page updating. If you sign in and turn on "bonus change" notifications in your profile, you'll get a push when a card you're tracking has a material welcome-bonus change.
Verified 2026-05-08 against: Barclays JetBlue Premier card page, Barclays JetBlue Plus card page, Citi AAdvantage Globe Mastercard, Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select, Citi AAdvantage Business World Elite, Chase United Gateway, Chase United Explorer, Chase United Quest, Chase United Club Infinite, Chase United Business, Chase United Club Business, Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless, Amex Marriott Bonvoy Business, Chase IHG One Rewards Traveler, Chase IHG One Rewards Premier, Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card, Chase World of Hyatt Business, Capital One business card lineup, Hawaiian Airlines / Atmos Rewards card page.