TravelingForMiles.com may receive commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on TravelingForMiles.com are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. TravelingForMiles.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers.
As of today, the Chase Sapphire Preferred® card has a meaningful set of new benefits, and the annual fee is staying at $95. That’s the good news. The less good news is that the refresh comes bundled with two changes that take value away, one of which will sting if you’re a Hyatt loyalist.
Here’s what’s changed.
Sapphire Preferred new bonus categories
Two new 3x categories have been added:
- Gas and EV charging
- Vacation rentals (Airbnb, Vrbo, and similar).
Both are useful additions, particularly the vacation rental category, given how large those bookings can be relative to a typical hotel stay.
The gas and EV charging category will probably be less exciting for most holders of the Sapphire Preferred card, but it does make the card a more credible everyday option for people who don’t already have a dedicated card for fuel spending (I tend to put all my gas spending on the Citi Strata Premier card which also offers 3 points/dollar at gas stations).
Boosted hotel credit
The card’s annual Chase Travel hotel credit has been doubled from $50 to $100.
There’s no minimum stay requirement and no registration is required – you just need to prepay a hotel booking through Chase Travel.
For existing cardholders who have already used their $50 credit this year, a further $50 is now available. If you haven’t used it yet, the full $100 is available as of today.
This is the most straightforwardly useful change in the refresh. A $100 travel credit on a $95 annual fee card means the credit alone more than covers the cost of holding the card, before you’ve done anything else with it.
Personally, I’m only likely to use this credit on a cheap 1-night stay as by booking through Chase Travel I’ll be giving up the chance to earn whatever points the hotel I’m staying at offers and I’ll be giving up the ability to use any elite status benefits that I would have been due had I booked directly with the hotel.
Nevertheless, I like having a credit which, in one fell swoop, effectively rebates my whole annual fee.
Global Entry / TSA PreCheck / NEXUS credit
A credit of up to $120 every four years toward Global Entry, TSA PreCheck, or NEXUS has been added to the Chase Sapphire Preferred® card. and as this has traditionally been a benefit reserved for more premium cards, getting it on a $95 annual fee card is nice.
Going for the Global Entry option is probably the obvious choice for most frequent flyers as that also includes TSA PreCheck. NEXUS is worth considering if you cross the US/Canada border regularly.
Emergency evacuation coverage
Emergency evacuation and transportation coverage of up to $100,000 has been added to the Sapphire Preferred’s existing travel protections.
This kicks in if you’re injured or ill more than 100 miles from home and is a benefit that not many cards offer and that, as far as I can tell, no other card costing as little as $95/year offers (it’s a benefit on the considerably more expensive Chase Sapphire Reserve® card).
The Sapphire Preferred already had a solid suite of travel protections for a card with a sub-$100 annual fee and this update just makes that offering a little bit better and it makes the card harder to beat at its price point for travel insurance alone.
Apple TV+ subscription
A complimentary one-year Apple TV+ subscription is now available to cardholders who activate the option by 31 December 2026.
For existing Apple TV subscribers, that’s a straightforward offset against a cost you’re already paying, so this should be a great credit to be given.
For everyone else, however, it’s not going to mean very much unless you were already considering a subscription.
The bad news
Unfortunately, as is so often the case with credit card updates, the news isn’t all good.
The points bonus has been removed
The annual 10% points bonus, which gave cardholders a bonus equal to 10% of their purchases from the prior year, has been discontinued.
For new applicants, it’s gone immediately. For existing cardholders, purchases through 1 October 2026 will still count toward the bonus, which will be paid out by 31 January 2027.
For anyone spending meaningful amounts on the card, this is a real loss. Someone spending $50,000 a year on the card was getting 5,000 bonus points annually. That’s not a windfall, but it’s also not nothing.
Hyatt transfers made worse
The big bit of bad news, however, is that Chase has cut the the transfer ratio between Ultimate Rewards and the World of Hyatt from 1:1 to 4:3 for holders of the Sapphire Preferred card.
This change doesn’t affect holders of the Chase Sapphire Reserve® who keep their 1:1 Hyatt transfer ratio, so this is a distinction which now becomes another of the more tangible differences between the two Sapphire consumer cards.
For new Sapphire Preferred cardholders, Ultimate Rewards points now transfer to World of Hyatt at a rate of 4:3, meaning 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points becomes 750 Hyatt points.
Existing cardholders retain the 1:1 ratio until 1 October 2026.
Quick thoughts
My take on this refresh is that Chase is giving with one hand and taking with the other, and the taking is more targeted at engaged miles and points fans than the giving is.
The new earning categories, the doubled hotel credit, and the travel protections are all genuinely very useful additions to card which was already very good (I hold it), and for a cardholder who isn’t invested in the World of Hyatt they more than offset the losses.
A single, easily usable, hotel credit that more than covers the card’s annual fee is hard to argue with.
But the Hyatt devaluation cannot be ignored as it will be a hammer blow to a lot of this card’s membership base.
If you currently hold the Sapphire Preferred specifically because you value Hyatt points and wanted to transfer at 1:1, the maths has now changed.
The Reserve card now has a meaningful advantage on that front, and for heavy Hyatt users the fee gap between the two cards starts to look less relevant if you’re losing 25% of your Hyatt transfers on the Preferred (especially when you remember that the Reserve card’s annual travel credit effectively brings that card’s annual fee down to $495).
For new applicants deciding between the two cards today, Hyatt loyalty just became a more serious factor in the decision.
For existing Preferred cardholders, the window to transfer to Hyatt at 1:1 closes on 1 October 2026. If you have Ultimate Rewards points you were planning to move to Hyatt at some point, doing it before that date is going to be important.
Related: Chase devalues points transfers to Hyatt (only Sapphire Reserve cards spared)
Bottom line
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® refresh brings genuine improvements – a doubled hotel credit, two new 3x categories, Global Entry/PreCheck coverage, and stronger travel protections – all for the same $95 annual fee, so on balance, for a lot of cardholders, this is a better card than it was yesterday.
The Hyatt transfer devaluation, however, will be a huge blow to a large number of this card’s fans and anyone who holds the card primarily for Hyatt transfers is going to have to reconsider if this is a card that still works for them.
I’m in that position and as things stand, I’m not sure what I’m going to do.
What do you think of the changes?
