Which Points and Miles Actually Expire in 2026, and What Really Resets the Clock

Points expiry is the only way to lose a balance without any price changing. Across the twenty programmes in this article it takes four different shapes, and only two of them respond to the advice everybody repeats, which is to keep the account active. For the other two, nothing you do resets the clock.

That matters because a devaluation at least announces itself. Expiry takes the full amount, on a date nobody sent you a reminder about, under a rule you thought you had already satisfied.

There is also a live change to record. Emirates has confirmed on its own Skywards programme updates page that from 1 June 2027 it is altering how Skywards Miles expire, and for most members the effect is that miles will last less time than they do today. The mechanism is easy to misread, so it gets its own section below.

Expiry means four different things

Programmes are usually sorted into "expires" and "does not expire". That split hides the distinction that actually decides what you should do about it.

1. Per-batch expiry

Every mile carries its own clock, dated from the transaction that earned it. Nothing you do afterwards extends it. Emirates Skywards, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, Lufthansa Miles and More and Turkish Miles and Smiles all work this way. A Miles and More member who flies every month still loses their oldest miles on schedule. This is the group where "stay active" is not merely incomplete advice. It is the wrong instruction.

2. Activity-reset expiry

The whole balance expires after a period of inactivity, and one qualifying transaction resets the clock for everything in the account. British Airways, American, Aeroplan, Qatar, Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Flying Blue and Bilt all work this way. The only question that matters here is what counts as qualifying, and the answer differs far more than you would expect. Hilton and Flying Blue both exclude the action most members would reach for first.

3. Closure-driven forfeiture

No time clock at all, but the balance is tied to an account or a card that can be closed. This is how the transferable card currencies work. American Express Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards and Capital One miles have no expiry date, and every one of them can be zeroed by a closure.

4. No expiry

Delta SkyMiles and United MileagePlus miles, and Alaska's Atmos Rewards points, are described by their own programmes as not expiring. Alaska's Atmos Rewards conditions of membership put it plainly: points "do not have an expiration date and may remain in an account indefinitely", provided the programme itself has not been terminated. That is not the same as no risk. Delta's rules list several separate grounds on which an account can be closed and the balance removed. Alaska draws a second distinction on the same terms page: redeemable points never expire, but status points, which exist only to track qualification, are valid only in the calendar year they are earned and expire on 31 December. Losing status points is not losing your balance, and the two are easy to confuse in an account summary.

The table

Two rows in that table currently disagree with our own points expiry tool, which carries both Bilt and Alaska at 24 months of inactivity from earlier editorial research. Reading the source documents for this article closed both: Bilt's terms define an inactive account at 18 months, and Alaska's terms say its points have no expiration date at all. The tool is being corrected to match. Until it is, the figures in this article are the ones with the primary source behind them, and we would rather say that plainly than quietly change a number.

Redeeming does not always count, and Hilton is the clearest case

The most common instinct when a balance is at risk is to spend some of it. In several programmes that works. In Hilton Honors, on the wording of the terms, it does not.

Clause 17 of the Honors terms sets out a closed list of what counts as eligible activity: staying at a participating hotel, earning points through Hilton or a third party including a co-branded card, purchasing points, or donating points. Booking an award night is absent from that list. So is transferring points to an airline, pooling them, and gifting them. Meanwhile Hilton's own consumer-facing page on staying active tells members they can save their points by staying, earning or redeeming, and lists booking with points among the ways to keep an account active.

Those two pages cannot both be right, and the one that governs is the contract. A member relying on "I will book an award night to reset the clock" is relying on the marketing copy. Hilton is also the only one of the four large hotel programmes with no status-based exemption whatsoever: a Lifetime Diamond member's points sit on the same 24-month clock as everyone else's. Our Hilton Honors status tiers guide covers what those tiers do and do not carry.

Flying Blue has the same shape of rule for a different reason. Its general terms build expiry entirely around earning activity, and redemption appears nowhere in the clause. Note that the published edition of those terms carries a 28 March 2022 date, and that they reserve to Air France-KLM the power to designate which earning activities extend the whole balance rather than only part of it. Several secondary sources report that any earning activity, including a transfer in from a bank programme, now extends the entire balance for 24 months. No Air France, KLM or Flying Blue page could be found stating that, so treat it as reported rather than established.

Four programmes where nothing you do helps

Emirates, KrisFlyer, Miles and More and Turkish share a mechanism, and it deserves stating plainly because it inverts the standard advice.

Emirates Skywards, and the change coming in 2027

Emirates Skywards sets a three-year validity period running from the flight or partner transaction, then expires those miles at the end of the member's birth month following the end of that period. The consequence is a lottery. A member whose birthday falls shortly before the anniversary gets close to the bare 36 months. A member whose birthday falls shortly after gets an extra run of months for nothing.

Emirates' own worked example shows the spread. Miles earned on 10 May 2024 expire on 31 July 2027 for a member with a July birthday, and on 31 March 2028 for a member with a March birthday. Same miles, same earning date, roughly eight months of difference decided by date of birth.

That is what changes on 1 June 2027. For miles earned from that date, Emirates moves to three years from the flight or partner activity date, rounded to the end of that month. Existing balances are unaffected, and partner-earned miles are explicitly inside the new rule. Framed as consistency it is defensible, and Emirates makes exactly that argument. Framed as an outcome, it removes the birth-month bonus, so a member who currently gets close to 47 months of validity will get roughly 36.

Two further things about that announcement are worth recording. Only Platinum members are exempt from Skywards expiry, and that exemption lasts only while Platinum is held. And the page carrying the announcement is served with a directive telling search engines not to index it. Emirates has published the change and asked search engines to ignore it. Our Emirates Skywards tier guide covers what Platinum takes to reach.

KrisFlyer, and the two details most summaries get wrong

KrisFlyer expires miles three years after earning, at the end of the equivalent month. Two details are widely reported incorrectly.

First, only PPS Club members are exempt. Elite Silver and Elite Gold are not. What Elite tiers get is a longer paid extension: one year rather than six months, bought with miles or cash, and only before the miles expire.

Second, the KrisFlyer account itself lapses after a period measured from the last earning transaction, and a redemption does not restart that clock. The period is market-specific: Singapore Airlines publishes 45 months for Singapore and 39 months for Australia and New Zealand, so check the version of the terms for the country you joined in. Either way, if you have not earned in years and have been redeeming occasionally, the account clock is still running. Our guides to KrisFlyer Elite qualification and PPS Club set out what each tier actually carries.

Miles and More, where the exemption is generous and easy to lose

Miles and More expires miles 36 months after the earning event, at the end of that quarter. Its exemption is unusually generous and unusually fragile: Frequent Traveller, the lowest tier, already confers full mileage protection, and so, where the card is offered for your country and product, does holding a Miles and More credit card for at least three months and making at least one qualifying purchase every month. Miss a single month and expiry restarts the following quarter.

Turkish Miles and Smiles, the strictest of the four

Turkish Miles and Smiles expires miles at the end of the third full calendar year after they are processed. That produces the same accident of timing as Emirates, keyed to the calendar rather than to a birthday: miles earned in January 2026 and in December 2026 both die on 31 December 2029, so the January batch gets nearly a year less. There is no status exemption at any tier, including Elite Plus. The only remedy is a paid extension of three additional calendar years, bought before the miles expire. One trap in the wording is worth knowing: miles must be used for ticketing before the expiry date, not merely held in a reservation.

The activity-reset programmes, and what actually counts

Where a reset does exist, the definition of qualifying activity is where the money is.

British Airways is the most generous on paper: 36 months, reset by collecting, spending, purchasing or transferring a single Avios. Two clauses in its terms are worth reading properly, because most summaries carry neither.

Clause 3.12.1 says membership terminates automatically on the expiry of all Avios after 36 consecutive months without qualifying activity. Not just the balance: the account. The terms say nothing about Tier Points or Lifetime Tier Points being cancelled in that event, and the only clause that does cancel them is the one covering a member's death, so treat the loss of a lifetime record as unstated rather than as established.

Clause 18.1.18 is the one that changes the advice. If a Household Account contains a Gold, Silver or Bronze member who has collected or spent Avios in the last 36 months, the Avios of every other member of that household are not subject to expiry at all. And clause 18.1.17 says that where a household member's own balance does expire, their membership and the household account continue in effect regardless of 3.12.1. So British Airways does have a status-linked exemption. It just runs through the household rather than through the individual, which is why the usual "no tier exemption at BA" line is wrong for anyone in a Household Account with a status holder in it.

American runs a 24-month clock reset by earning or redeeming, and any qualifying activity extends every unexpired mile in the account by a further 24 months. Two things sit slightly off from where members expect them. The exemption is age-based rather than tier-based, so under-21s are outside the rule and Executive Platinum members are not. And the widely cited credit-card exemption, that primary cardmembers are not subject to the 24-month requirement, appears in American's FAQ rather than in the mileage section of the terms. It is a policy rather than a contractual right. American also runs a separate and later account-termination rule at 36 months, and offers paid reinstatement of expired miles within a limited window.

Aeroplan expiry is currently switched off. Air Canada has paused points expiry, and its own points expiry suspended notice confirms that points which would otherwise have expired will not do so before 30 November 2026. The 18-month rule resumes on that date. Any advice telling an Aeroplan member to transact before a 2026 deadline is wrong for the next three months. When it does resume, earning or redeeming a single point resets it, and family sharing counts for every member with a balance. The elite and cardholder exemption Air Canada advertises sits on its marketing pages rather than in the expiry section of the terms.

IHG One Rewards is the shortest hotel window at 12 months, not the 24 that most comparisons state, and it is tested on whether a transaction moves your balance in either direction. It also has the broadest exemption of the four large hotel programmes: any elite tier, including status held through a co-branded card, makes points non-expiring for as long as that status is maintained. Only base Club members are exposed. Our IHG status tiers guide covers how those tiers are reached.

Marriott Bonvoy runs 24 months, reset by earning or redeeming, but explicitly not by gifting or by receiving a transfer. It also has a clawback that catches people: redeem points for an award stay, then cancel before arrival without having done anything else qualifying, and the points expire. In Marriott's own worked example this happens even where the stay date fell after the expiry date.

World of Hyatt forfeits the whole balance after 24 consecutive months of inactivity, and once forfeited the points cannot be reinstated. Its qualifying-activity list is the broadest here: earning points, earning stay credit with a partner, redeeming, gifting an award, converting points to a partner currency, buying or combining points, or simply holding a valid Hyatt co-branded card linked to the account. That last item is the practical one. At Hyatt the card keeps the account alive on its own, which is a card-based exemption rather than a tier-based one.

Qatar Privilege Club runs 36 months from the last accrual or redemption, with no status exemption at any tier, and allows paid revalidation within one year of expiry. Qpoints, which are the status currency rather than the spending one, expire on the 365th day after earning and are a separate matter entirely.

Hotel elite nights explained covers the parallel question of what counts towards status rather than towards keeping a balance alive, and the two lists are not the same.

The card currencies, where the risk is closure rather than time

Amex Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards and Capital One miles have no expiry date. What they have is a set of ways to lose everything at once.

Amex's terms are blunt: cancel your last linked product, or have Amex cancel any product for any reason, and the points go. There is also an indirect death by disuse, because if Amex closes a card account for inactivity the member has a short window to spend the balance. Notably, the assurance that points do not expire lives in Amex's FAQ rather than in the terms document itself. Our Membership Rewards transfer guide covers where those points can go while you still hold them.

Chase is more generous than folklore suggests in one direction and harsher in another. Closure for any reason other than misuse, fraud, bankruptcy or non-compliance gives at least 30 days to spend the balance, and where state law limits forfeiture the points are automatically redeemed as a statement credit. But the immediate-forfeiture bucket is wider than most people assume, because an account that is not in good standing can lose its points without any misuse being alleged. Chase treats account-status and payment problems separately from misuse and fraud, and both routes end in the same place. Our Ultimate Rewards guide covers the transfer side.

Capital One is alone in the set in having a cash-out clause. On account closure it may apply the rewards balance against any credit balance owed and refund the difference, though the language is permissive rather than mandatory.

Bilt is the exception that breaks the rule. It is the only transferable currency here with a genuine time-based expiry. Bilt's own terms, last updated 14 July 2026, define an inactive account as one with no activity for 18 months, and count rent or mortgage payments made through the account, qualified purchases on the co-brand card, any redemption, and entry into a Bilt promotional sweepstakes as activity. There is no status exemption at any Bilt tier. Anyone repeating the line that card currencies never expire should know that Bilt's window is shorter than every hotel programme in this article except IHG at base level. If you are moving points between programmes, our guide to pooling and transfer strategies covers what transfers do and do not preserve.

What to actually do

Four rules cover most of it.

• Find out which mechanism you are in before you do anything. If you hold Emirates, KrisFlyer, Miles and More or Turkish miles, transacting does not help, and you need a redemption plan with a date on it or a paid extension bought before expiry. If you hold anything else, a single qualifying transaction is usually enough, but check what qualifies, because Hilton's contract and Flying Blue's terms both exclude redemption.
• Do not rely on an exemption you read on a marketing page. American's card exemption, Aeroplan's elite exemption and Hilton's redemption-counts claim all appear in consumer-facing copy and not in the governing terms. They are probably honoured. They are not contractual.
• Treat status exemptions as narrower, and odder, than they look. Only PPS Club at KrisFlyer, not Elite Gold. Only Platinum at Emirates. Only Lifetime Elite at Marriott. Turkish, Qatar and Hilton exempt nobody at any tier. British Airways exempts nobody individually but protects a whole Household Account through one active Bronze, Silver or Gold member. IHG, unusually, exempts everybody with any tier.
• Write the dates down somewhere that is not your memory. This is the part nobody does, because a per-batch expiry date is invisible in most account interfaces until the balance drops.

That last point is where a tracker earns its keep, and it is a fair place to say what Miles Mosaic does. It tracks balances and elite status across 31 loyalty programmes, 24 airline and seven hotel, plus the transferable card currencies, and forecasts whether booked and planned travel will hold status through the next renewal. Balances are updated by the member rather than scraped, and no account password is ever stored. The free Explorer tier carries ads, and Pro removes them at $14.99 a month. The reason any of that matters here is mundane rather than clever: the hard part of expiry is not any single rule, it is holding a dozen different clocks, on four different mechanisms, in one place. The per-programme rules behind this article are also published as a free points expiry tool, alongside a deadlines view.

Why expiry gets so little coverage

Expiry rarely appears in devaluation coverage, because nothing about it is announced. No price moves. No chart changes. A balance stops existing on a date that was set three years earlier by a transaction the member has forgotten.

That makes it the quietest of the mechanisms by which a programme reduces what it owes you, and the accounting is not incidental to the design. Unredeemed points sit on an airline's balance sheet as deferred revenue, and expiry converts a liability into income without anyone having to fly anywhere. We have written about the economics behind that, and about what to do when a programme moves against you.

The practical conclusion is smaller than the argument. Know which of the four mechanisms each of your balances sits in. Two of them can be handled with a single transaction. Two of them cannot, and those are the ones holding most of the miles that quietly disappear.