Chase is running two welcome offers on the same $99 IHG One Rewards Premier card: 5 Free Nights, each capped at 40,000 points and not top-up-able, after $4,000 in 3 months, or 140,000 points after $3,000. The crossover is 28,000 points a night. Here is the certificate math to run on your own dates before you apply.
The short version: Chase is running two welcome offers on the same $99 IHG One Rewards Premier card at the same time. The public card page, read September 14, 2026, pays 140,000 points after $3,000 in 3 months. A separate Chase landing page, read the same minute, pays 5 Free Nights, each capped at 40,000 points, after $4,000 in 3 months. Which one you get depends on which link you apply through, and Chase says as much in its own fine print. Five nights at the cap come to 200,000 points of room, about $1,200 at our 0.6-cent IHG valuation, against $840 for the points. That is a ceiling, not a promise. A certificate buys one night, stops at 40,000 points, and unlike this card's anniversary night it cannot be topped up. The number that decides this is what your five nights, on your dates, actually cost.
Chase's IHG One Rewards Premier page, read September 14, 2026, states the new cardmember offer as 140,000 bonus points after $3,000 on purchases in the first 3 months, plus 10,000 points after you add an authorized user in the same window. Chase's own line under it: "That's up to 4 Nights at 4,700+ out of all IHG Hotels and Resorts' properties globally."
A second Chase page for the same card, headed "Exclusive Guest Offer" and read the same day, states it as 5 Free Nights valued at up to 200,000 points, "each night valued at up to 40,000 points," after $4,000 in the first 3 months, plus the same 10,000-point authorized-user bonus. Its offer details explain how both can be true at once: "Offers may vary depending on where you apply, for example online or in a branch, and can change over time. To take advantage of this particular offer now, apply through the method provided in this advertisement." Neither page prints an end date.
Same card, same $99 fee, same earning, same anniversary night, same 24-month rule. Chase's wording: the card "is not available to either (i) current cardmembers of any personal IHG One Rewards Credit Card, or (ii) previous cardmembers of any personal IHG One Rewards Credit Card who received a new cardmember bonus for any personal IHG One Rewards Credit Card within the last 24 months." The only things that move between the two offers are the bonus itself and $1,000 of spending.
The certificate terms, from the offer details on the 5 Free Nights page:
Two of those lines do most of the work. The cap is hard: a 45,000-point hotel is out of reach with a certificate, full stop, because you cannot add points on top. This card's anniversary night has the opposite rule, "with the ability to add on points from your IHG One Rewards account to redeem your Anniversary Free Night at hotels above the 40,000 point redemption level," so Chase wrote two different rules for two certificates that look identical on the page. Read the one that applies to the certificate you are holding.
And the clock is one clock. All five nights issue together, up to eight weeks after you finish the spending, and all five expire twelve months after that. Five nights you can spread across a year of trips is a different card from five nights you have to scramble to use in the last quarter.
Here is the whole idea in one table. Same five certificates in every row. The only thing that changes is where you sleep.
| What your five nights price at | Room the certificates cover | Value at 0.6¢ a point |
|---|---|---|
| 40,000 points each | 200,000 points | $1,200 |
| 30,000 points each | 150,000 points | $900 |
| 20,000 points each | 100,000 points | $600 |
| 15,000 points each | 75,000 points | $450 |
Book five nights at 15,000-point hotels and you still get five free nights, which is a fine thing to have. You also leave 125,000 points of headroom on the table, because the cap is a ceiling you cannot bank. IHG prices reward nights by demand, and the landing page says so: "Point redemption values may vary depending on demand." The same hotel can sit under the cap in February and over it in July.
The points offer is 140,000. Spread over five nights that is 28,000 a night, and that number is the whole decision.
If the five nights you would actually book average more than 28,000 points, the certificates cover more room than the points would. If they average less, the points win, and they win by more than the table shows, because points divide and certificates do not. A 12,000-point night costs 12,000 points. It costs a whole certificate. The points also carry a lighter spending requirement, $3,000 against $4,000, and they do not come with a twelve-month expiry stamped on them.
Chase's own framing helps here. Its "up to 4 nights" line for 140,000 points works out to 35,000 a night. At 35,000 the two offers are close to even: the certificates are a little ahead on room, the points are ahead on flexibility. Above 35,000, and especially at the 40,000 cap, the certificates pull away. Below 28,000, take the points and do not look back.
Order of operations, in the order that actually saves you money.
Year one is the bonus. Up to about $1,200 of room if every night prices at the cap, realistically somewhere in the $600 to $900 band depending on where you stay, against a $99 fee and $4,000 of spending you may well do anyway.
Every year after is a different question, and it is the same one for both offers because the recurring benefits do not change. You get one Anniversary Free Night, capped at 40,000 points but with top-up allowed, every account anniversary. You hold Platinum Elite status for as long as you keep the card. You get a $100 statement credit and 10,000 points in any calendar year you spend $20,000, and Diamond Elite status in any year you spend $40,000. On points stays of four nights or more, the fourth night is free. There is a Global Entry, TSA PreCheck or NEXUS credit of up to $120 every four years, and no foreign transaction fee.
So the renewal question is short. Is one night at a hotel priced up to 40,000 points, plus Platinum, worth $99 to you every year? For a household that stays at Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza or InterContinental a few nights a year, that is usually a comfortable yes. For someone who came only for the welcome offer, it is worth answering honestly before the second fee posts.
Someone with five nights already in mind at hotels that price near 40,000 points gets a genuinely strong first year from the certificate offer. Five nights at that level is roughly $1,200 of room against a $99 fee, and it takes no cleverness: book the nights you were already taking, at the hotels you already wanted, before the clock runs out.
Someone whose IHG stays are mostly 10,000 to 20,000-point nights should take the 140,000 points instead. They split across more nights, they do not expire in a year, and the spending bar is lower. That is not a mark against the certificates. It is the arithmetic of a capped certificate, and it is exactly why the hotel search belongs before the application rather than after it.
We ran the same math on Chase's Marriott card in what a Boundless Free Night Award is actually worth, and if you have not settled on a chain, our best hotel credit cards ranking lines them up side by side.
The 5 Free Nights offer lives on Chase's own landing page for it. The 140,000-point offer lives on the standard IHG Premier page. Both are plain Chase links. We hold no referral for this card and no card issuer compensates us. Chase says offers vary by where you apply, so the page you are on when you press apply is the offer you get. Read it there before you submit anything.
Offers change without notice and Chase is the only authority on its own terms. Confirm everything on Chase's page before you apply. Not financial advice.