Chase Sapphire Preferred Changes: Is It Still Worth It In 2026?

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card changes 2026 cardholders have been bracing for are now confirmed: Chase is ending the 10% anniversary points bonus on October 1, 2026.

This is a small benefit getting cut, but it’s also a signal. Chase has been busy reworking the entire Sapphire family, and we can likely expect more updates to the Sapphire Preferred card soon.

Here’s what’s changing and whether the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card still earns its $95 annual fee without it.

What Is the 10% Anniversary Points Bonus?

Each year on your cardmember anniversary, Chase calculates a 10% bonus against the base points you earned from purchases during the previous year and deposits them into your Ultimate Rewards balance roughly 60 to 90 days later.

The math is simple: 1 bonus point for every $10 in base spend. Put $25,000 of spend on the card in a year and you’d see 2,500 bonus points hit your account on your anniversary.

When Does the Bonus End?

The 10% anniversary points bonus ends October 1, 2026. Cardmembers will continue earning it on qualifying spend through that date, and any bonus tied to spending you’ve already done will still post on your normal anniversary timeline.

After October 1, 2026, the perk is gone. There’s no grandfathering, no transition offer, and no replacement benefit announced yet.

Why Is Chase Discontinuing the Bonus?

The simple answer is that probably most cardholders weren’t really benefiting from it in the first place.

When you look at the actual cash value at typical spend levels, the perk was modest. A cardholder putting $10,000 of base spend on the card was earning roughly $20 worth of bonus points per year. Useful, but rarely the deciding factor on whether to keep the card. And the cardholders who would have benefited most, the ones routing tens of thousands of dollars of non-bonus spend through the Sapphire Preferred, were generally better off using a flat 2% cash back card or a category card matching their spending pattern anyway.

What’s more interesting is what’s coming next. Chase has spent the past year overhauling the Sapphire Reserve and refreshing the Sapphire lineup more broadly, and the Preferred is overdue for its own treatment. Whether that comes in the form of a beefed-up bonus structure, new credits, or a fee adjustment is anyone’s guess right now, but a card refresh of some kind appears to be on the way.

Is It Still Worth Getting The Chase Sapphire Preferred?

Yes. The 10% anniversary bonus was a nice perk, but it was never the reason to hold this card. Losing it doesn’t change the core math — and it definitely doesn’t change what makes the Sapphire Preferred a foundational piece of any points strategy.

The transfer partners are the real value. Fourteen airline and hotel partners at 1:1 means your points become award flights or hotel nights.

$240 in food credits alone covers the fee. Complimentary DashPass ($120/yr) plus the $10 monthly DoorDash non-restaurant promo ($120/yr) is $240 in built-in value if you use DoorDash even occasionally. The $95 annual fee is paid before you factor in anything else.

Primary rental car coverage is rare. Most cards offer secondary coverage — meaning your personal insurance gets hit first. Sapphire Preferred pays out before your auto policy, which can save you $15–$25/day on rental insurance and protect your premiums after a claim (terms apply).

The trip protections are best-in-class for $95. Up to $10K trip cancellation, $500 trip delay reimbursement after just 12 hours, and $3,000 lost luggage coverage. A standalone travel insurance policy with similar coverage runs $200–$400 per trip. Here it’s included.

It’s the gateway to the Chase ecosystem. You need a Sapphire card to transfer Ultimate Rewards from Freedom Unlimited or Freedom Flex to airline partners. Without a Sapphire, your 5x Freedom Flex bonus categories cap out at 1¢ per point. The Preferred unlocks the entire stack at the lowest possible fee.

No foreign transaction fees on a $95 card. Most no-fee cards charge 3% abroad. On a $5,000 international trip, that’s $150 in fees you’d save just by using this card overseas. That alone outearns the lost 10% bonus for anyone who travels internationally even once a year.

Bottom line: The 10% bonus going away is a real loss, but it’s a small one. The Sapphire Preferred earns its $95 on the food credits alone, and everything else — the transfer partners, the protections, the ecosystem access — is pure upside. If you have this card, keep it. If you don’t, the math still makes sense.

You can now hold the Preferred card even if you already have the Sapphire Reserve, thanks to a recent Chase update that allows you to hold multiple cards in the same card family, and earn the welcome bonus on both.

I Already Have a CSP, Should I Keep It?

For most cardholders, yes. The card’s value proposition was never really anchored on the anniversary bonus.

The $50 annual hotel credit on Chase Travel bookings alone offsets more than half the annual fee. The potential Points Boost rates when booking travel through the Chase Travel portal pushes Ultimate Rewards values higher than the cash-equivalent rate. Trip cancellation and interruption coverage, primary rental car insurance, and the suite of purchase protections continue unchanged. And the transfer partner roster, which is the real reason most points enthusiasts hold this card, isn’t going anywhere.

Where it gets genuinely worth recalculating is if you fit a narrow profile: you put significant non-bonus spend on the card, you don’t use the hotel credit, and you don’t transfer points to partners. If you’re nodding to all four, the math on a $95 annual fee gets tighter without that anniversary bonus padding the equation.

For a full breakdown of the Sapphire Preferred benefits, click here.

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