Southwest promotional Companion Pass, August 2026: the register-then-book order, the exact deadlines, what "flies free" really costs, and whether a 57-day companion window is worth a qualifying trip.
This offer ended on August 6, 2026. The article stays up as a record of what the offer was and how it worked; the numbers below are as they stood while it ran.
The short version: Southwest is offering a promotional Companion Pass — book one round trip (or two one-ways) and someone else flies with you for taxes only, from January 5 to March 3, 2027. You have to register before you book, and you have to do both by Thursday, August 6, 2026. The part most people get wrong: flights booked with points count, which is a reversal of how this promotion used to work. Terms read on Southwest's own promotion page, August 4, 2026.
A Companion Pass lets you name one person who flies with you for free, and "free" here means you still pay taxes and fees, which Southwest states start at $5.60 each way. The real version of this benefit takes 135,000 qualifying points in a calendar year to earn. The promotional version takes one round trip.
| Step | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Register, then book a qualifying round trip or two qualifying one-way flights | Thursday, August 6, 2026 |
| Finish flying those qualifying flights | November 18, 2026 |
| Your companion flies with you | January 5 to March 3, 2027 |
That last window is 57 days long. Hold on to that number, because it decides whether any of this is worth doing.
Register first. The promotion's own FAQ is direct about it: "Qualifying flights must be booked after you register, between August 3 and August 6, 2026." A flight you book before you register does not count, and there is no way to apply it afterwards.
Southwest also says the qualifying flights have to be flown by the same person who registered, and that your Rapid Rewards number has to be on the booking. If you book through a third party and your number is not attached, you have bought a flight and not a Companion Pass.
The question we keep getting is whether you have to pay cash to qualify. You do not. Southwest's promotion terms say it outright:
"Redemption reservations and Cash + Points bookings qualify for this promotional offer."
Every fare class counts too. The terms name Basic, Choice, Choice Preferred and Choice Extra. So the cheapest way to qualify is a points booking on a Basic fare.
Here is why people get this wrong, and it is a reasonable mistake. Southwest's general Rapid Rewards terms say the opposite: "Qualifying Flights exclude reward flights." That rule is real, but it governs how you earn points and the standard 135,000-point Companion Pass. It does not govern this promotion, which writes its own definition and drops the word "revenue" entirely. Earlier versions of this same promotion did require cash and said so in the fine print. Southwest changed it.
If you pay with Cash + Points, the terms say you still earn points, tier qualifying points and Companion Pass qualifying points — but only "on the portion of the base fare that is paid with dollars."
What does not count: Companion Pass travel itself, charter flights, group travel, and Getaways by Southwest bookings.
Book it, then leave it alone. The terms allow changes made inside the promotion window as long as the trip still flies inside the travel window. After that window closes, "changes made to any itinerary after the Promotion Period may eliminate qualification for this promotion." The FAQ puts it harder: any change outside the promotional requirements "will disqualify the flight."
This matters more for a points booking than a cash one, because points bookings are the easy ones to cancel and rebook without thinking twice. Do not.
Book direct, too. The terms list Southwest.com, the Southwest app, SWABIZ, GDS and Southwest Partner Services. One more limit from Southwest's help centre: you may be held to "one promotion or one of a certain type of promotion (e.g., an offer to earn promotional Companion Pass) at a time." If you already have one running, this may not stack.
Southwest is consistent about this in its own fine print: the companion flies "free of airline charges," and that "does not include taxes and fees from $5.60 one-way." So a round trip for your companion costs about $11.20 in taxes, before anything else. That is still a very good deal against a paid fare. It is not zero, and a headline that says zero is wrong. If you're also watching for cheap qualifying flights, we've tracked recent fare sales like Southwest's Week of WOW promotion.
Work it backwards from the 57-day window. The pass is only useful if you were going to fly Southwest with another person between January 5 and March 3, 2027. If you were, the value is roughly every companion fare you would have bought in those two months, minus $11.20 a round trip. Two trips at a $200 companion fare is about $377.60 kept.
If you were not already going to fly in that window, the honest answer is that this is worth close to nothing, and the qualifying round trip you would buy to unlock it costs real money today. A benefit that requires you to spend to reach it is only a benefit if the spending was already happening. If you need a qualifying flight and don't have one booked yet, check whether a current fare sale brings the cost down. We've been tracking Southwest's recent fare sales as they come and go.
The standard Companion Pass takes 135,000 qualifying points in a calendar year, or 100 qualifying one-way flights. Earn it and you hold it for the rest of that year plus the entire next one, your companion flies with you an unlimited number of times, and Southwest lets you change who that person is up to three times a year.
Set that next to 57 days and one designated person and you can see what the promotional version is: a sample, not the benefit. It is a good sample if you were flying anyway.
Southwest's own Companion Pass page says an eligible Rapid Rewards credit card gives a boost of 10,000 qualifying points each calendar year, deposited by January 31 or within about 30 days of opening the account. Against a 135,000-point target that boost is 7.4% of the way there. It helps; it does not get you there.
These are the cards we track, by annual fee:
| Card | Annual fee |
|---|---|
| Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business | $299 |
| Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority | $229 |
| Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier | $149 |
| Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Business | $149 |
| Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus | $99 |
We are deliberately not telling you to open one for this promotion. The promotional pass needs one round trip, not a card, and an annual fee paid for a 57-day companion window is a bad trade unless you were opening the card anyway. If you're weighing whether transferring points into Southwest makes sense outside this promotion, see our coverage of Chase's transfer bonus to Southwest.
Offer details and every quotation above come from Southwest's own promotion terms and FAQ, read August 4, 2026. Terms can change without notice; read them before you book.
Correction, August 4, 2026. An earlier version of this article said this promotion was account-specific, did not appear on Southwest's public promotions page, and that readers should check their own account before planning around it — with the warning that "if it is not in your account, no amount of booking will earn it." That was wrong. Southwest publishes the offer publicly with full terms and open registration, and its terms contain no eligibility restriction. That error may have discouraged readers from an offer that was available to them, and we are sorry for it. The article also did not say whether points bookings qualify. They do. Both are corrected above.
Not financial advice.