Lufthansa new business class service officially launches May 6, 2026, and it’s the biggest soft product overhaul the airline has done in years. The rebrand is called FOX, short for Future Onboard Experience, and it touches every long-haul cabin from First through Economy. Lufthansa is spending more than €70 million on this in 2026 alone and replacing 187 million pieces of tableware across its global network. That’s not a tweak. That’s a full reset.
Lufthansa has gotten plenty of hate for their subpar soft product, so whether the experience actually feels different at 35,000 feet is the question every flyer cares about. Here’s what’s changing, what it’s worth, and how to book it with miles.
What FOX Actually Means
FOX is Lufthansa’s framework for redesigning service across all four cabins on every long-haul aircraft, including older planes that don’t have the new Allegris seats. The airline rolled it out in First Class on March 29, and Business, Premium Economy, and Economy follow on May 6.
The concept is built on three ideas: personalization (more choices for every passenger), comfort (upgraded materials and amenity kits), and what Lufthansa calls Signature Moments (small theatrical service touches meant to feel distinctly Lufthansa). Two years of development, more than 110 test flights, feedback from over 9,000 guests, and 500 crew members went into it. The airline also held 28 menu presentations at 57 airports worldwide to train teams ahead of the rollout.
What’s New in Lufthansa Business Class
Business Class is where most of the action is, and where most points-and-miles travelers will end up. The headline changes:
Johann Lafer menus. Lafer is a well-known German chef who already designed Lufthansa’s short-haul menus. He’s now redesigning the long-haul business class catering with rotating regional dishes.
Pre-select breakfast. You choose your morning meal the night before from a menu that includes smoothies, French toast, omelets, and other options. This is a meaningful upgrade — pre-selection means the kitchen actually has what you ordered instead of running out three rows ahead of you.
Sky Selection. Instead of a fixed second meal, you can order whenever you want from a menu that includes tapas bowls, currywurst, and macarons. Functionally this is closer to a Qatar Qsuite “dine on demand” model, just with smaller portions.
Cake service. Coffee and cake mid-flight as a Signature Moment, served in classic style. Sounds small, but it’s the kind of thing that photographs well and gets remembered.
New tableware throughout. Business class alone gets around 300,000 new main course plates. Stacked, those plates would reach 2,400 meters tall, or about 6.6 times the height of the Eiffel Tower.
How Premium Economy and Economy Change
Premium Economy gets a real bump. The entire first service has been upgraded, including a Business Class-level appetizer, three hot main course choices, and fresh warm bread. The dessert course adds pastries or a slice of cake. Beverage service is more frequent with greater variety and a new digestif service. Travelers also get cozy slippers. This narrows the gap with Air France Premium Economy, which has been the category benchmark.
Economy gets amenity kits for the first time on long-haul flights — sleep mask and earplugs included. New tableware, cutlery, trays, and printed menus apply across all classes, not just economy. The beverage list expands significantly, and on flights longer than ten hours, there are now three hot main course options instead of two.
How to Book Lufthansa New Business Class With Points
This is where things get interesting, and where most other coverage falls short. Lufthansa Business Class award space opens up at various windows, and the booking method depends on which mileage program you’re using.
For Lufthansa Business Class specifically, your best Star Alliance options are Air Canada Aeroplan, United MileagePlus, Avianca LifeMiles, ANA Mileage Club, and Turkish Miles&Smiles. Each has different sweet spots and surcharge structures. Aeroplan and LifeMiles are usually the cleanest from the US. You can find availability across all of these programs using Seats.aero.
But here’s the part most people miss. If you want to book Lufthansa First Class with miles, your options are dramatically more limited. Lufthansa typically releases First Class award space to partner programs like Aeroplan only one to two days before departure, which makes advance planning nearly impossible. Miles & More, the Lufthansa house program, gets advance access to First Class space and is the only reliable way to lock in a seat ahead of time.
For years, US flyers had almost no way to feed Miles & More. Lufthansa famously had no transferable points partners, and the Barclays Miles & More co-branded card was the only meaningful path. That changed on March 9, 2026, when Rove Miles became the first and only US transferable points currency to add Miles & More as a 1:1 transfer partner. No major bank program — not Amex, Chase, Capital One, Citi, or Bilt — transfers to Miles & More.
If Lufthansa First Class is on your list, that makes a Rove Miles balance significantly more useful than it looks at first glance. You can sign up for Rove Miles here and get 1,500 miles just for making a free account, plus 5,000 more miles after your first hotel booking of $500 or more with code C9C.
One important caveat: Lufthansa’s new Allegris First Class cabin cannot be booked with points and miles from any program right now, including Miles & More. If you want a confirmed Allegris First seat, you’re paying cash. The classic First Class cabin is still bookable, and that’s where the FOX service upgrades will land for award travelers.
The Bottom Line
Lufthansa new business class under FOX is a long-overdue catch-up to where Air France, Qatar, and even British Airways have been for a while. The food upgrades are the most substantive change, and Sky Selection is the kind of feature that genuinely improves a long flight. The cake service is going to be all over Instagram by July.
If you have a Lufthansa flight booked between now and the end of 2026, you’ll see most of these changes. If you’re booking new, the bigger question is whether you can get the Allegris cabin on your route — that, plus FOX, is when the new Lufthansa actually feels new.
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