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- The deadline is real: Chase confirmed the Sapphire Preferred's 100,000-point offer ends Thursday, July 30, at 9 a.m. ET — earned after $5,000 of spend in the first three months.
- The value: 100,000 Chase points are commonly valued at roughly $2,050, one of the richest offers ever on a $95 travel card and just the third public 100K offer in 17 years.
- The angle that matters: nearly every "last chance" post counts down the clock but skips what actually gatekeeps the bonus — Chase's 5/24 rule and its once-per-lifetime bonus eligibility. Clear both and the deadline is all that's left.
- The good news: a recent rule change made more people eligible than in years — former Sapphire Reserve holders and authorized users included. You can now hold both Sapphire cards and earn one bonus on each.
- Then the spend + timing: $5,000 in three months (~$1,667/mo) on purchases you'd make anyway — and apply a day or two early, since approval isn't always instant.
For weeks the Chase Sapphire Preferred's 100,000-point welcome offer carried the vague label "ending soon." Now it has a timestamp. Chase has confirmed the offer expires Thursday, July 30, 2026, at 9 a.m. ET — earn 100,000 bonus points after spending $5,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening. Points experts generally value that haul at roughly $2,050, which makes it one of the richest welcome offers ever attached to a travel card with a $95 annual fee.
Predictably, the internet has answered with a wall of "apply now" urgency. And the offer is genuinely excellent. But the deadline is the easy part to get right — it's public and fixed. The harder, more useful question is the one those posts rush past: will you actually qualify for these 100,000 points? Two rules decide it, and neither has anything to do with the clock — Chase's 5/24 rule and its newer once-per-lifetime bonus eligibility. The good news buried under the countdown is that a recent rule change made more people eligible than they've been in years.
What Chase Actually Confirmed
Here are the terms, stripped of hype. The Sapphire Preferred is offering 100,000 bonus Ultimate Rewards points after $5,000 in purchases within three months of opening the account. The window closes at 9 a.m. ET on July 30 — a cutoff Chase has confirmed — and a reminder that "I'll do it that morning" is a risky plan when approvals sometimes take a day.
What makes this notable isn't just the number, it's the rarity. Before this promotion, the standard offer was 75,000 points. The jump to 100,000 hands you an extra 25,000 points — worth more than $500 by common points valuations — for the exact same $5,000 spend. And this is only the third time in the card's 17-year history that a public 100,000-point offer has appeared. This isn't a bonus that quietly cycles back every quarter; when it's gone, the likely reversion is to 75,000, and there's no promise the six-figure version returns soon.
The card underneath the bonus is stronger than it used to be, too. The 2026 refresh kept the $95 fee but added 3x on gas and EV charging and 3x on vacation rentals, bumped the annual Chase Travel hotel credit to up to $100, and layered in a Global Entry/TSA PreCheck/NEXUS application credit — on top of the existing 5x on Chase Travel, 3x on dining, 3x on online groceries, and 3x on select streaming. So even after the welcome points are spent, the ongoing card earns its keep.
First, Will You Even Qualify?
Here's what the last-chance roundups gloss over while they count down the clock: most people who miss out on this bonus won't miss it because of the deadline — they'll miss it because they were never eligible in the first place, and never checked. Chase decides who actually walks away with these 100,000 points using two gatekeepers. Clear both, and the deadline is all that's left to beat.
The first is the well-known 5/24 rule. Chase will almost certainly decline you if you've opened five or more credit cards — from any issuer, not just Chase — in the past 24 months. Some authorized-user accounts and certain business cards count toward that tally too, which trips up more applicants than they expect. If you're not sure where you stand, tally your new accounts from the last two years before you apply (a service like Credit Karma makes it quick). Applying while you're over 5/24 doesn't just fail — it wastes a hard inquiry on a card you were never going to get.
The second gatekeeper is bonus eligibility, and this is where the rules recently changed in applicants' favor. Chase scrapped its old "one Sapphire at a time" restriction and its 48-month waiting period, replacing both with a simpler once-per-lifetime rule: you can earn each Sapphire card's welcome bonus once, ever. The practical upshot is generous. If you've never earned the Preferred's welcome bonus, you're likely eligible right now — even if you currently hold, or once held, the Sapphire Reserve. Former Reserve holders who were locked out under the old rules can finally get the Preferred bonus, and you're allowed to hold both cards at the same time.
The one hard stop: if you've ever earned a welcome bonus on the Sapphire Preferred specifically, you can't earn it again — the lifetime limit is permanent, not a window you age out of. A past referral bonus doesn't count against you, and neither does holding a Chase Freedom card or an airline/hotel card. Not sure which bucket you're in? Chase will tell you. During the application it shows an eligibility pop-up before the hard inquiry posts — if it says you don't qualify for the bonus, you can back out with no inquiry on your report. There is genuinely no downside to starting the application just to see the pop-up.
A few specifics that come up constantly, straight from Chase's own terms and eligibility guidance:
- Authorized users are fine. Being an authorized user on someone else's Sapphire doesn't disqualify you from getting the card — and its bonus — in your own name.
- A spouse or partner can apply too. If neither of you has earned the Preferred bonus, two applications means a combined 200,000 points — provided you can each meet the spend.
- You don't need a Chase bank account, and holding other Chase travel cards (United, Marriott) won't block you.
- Denied by the robot? Chase's reconsideration line (1-888-338-2586) lets you make your case to a human before conceding.
| Eligibility factor | You're likely eligible if… | You're not eligible if… |
|---|---|---|
| 5/24 rule | Under 5 new cards (any issuer) in 24 months | 5 or more new cards in 24 months |
| The Preferred's bonus | You've never earned the Preferred welcome bonus | You earned it before (lifetime limit) |
| Had/have the Reserve | Fine — you can hold both cards now | No longer a disqualifier |
| Authorized user only | Yes — apply in your own name | — |
| Credit profile | Good-to-excellent credit (roughly 700+) | Thin file or heavy recent debt |
Swipe to see the full table →
"Most people who miss these 100,000 points won't miss the deadline — they'll miss the eligibility rules, and never check."
What 100,000 Chase Points Can Actually Do
If you clear those hurdles, the payoff is real travel, not an abstract number. The strength of Chase Ultimate Rewards is flexibility: you can redeem points at a fixed rate inside Chase Travel — often around 1 cent each — or transfer them to one of Chase's 14 airline and hotel partners, where the right redemption stretches well past 2 cents per point. That optionality is why the currency is valued so highly, and why a Chase balance is a better starting point for a beginner than a single airline's miles.
In concrete terms, 100,000 points is enough for a lie-flat business-class seat to Europe or Japan on a partner airline, several nights at a resort hotel, a stack of domestic economy flights for a family, or a mix of all three. If you're still learning how the currency works before you commit, our Chase Ultimate Rewards beginner's guide walks through earning, pooling, and redeeming from scratch — and if you want the case for pairing this card with its premium sibling, we cover whether to hold both Sapphire cards in a separate breakdown.
How to Hit $5,000 Without Wasting Money
The spending requirement is where good intentions go sideways, so plan it before you apply, not after. The clean way to reach $5,000 is to route spending you were already going to do onto the new card for three months: rent or mortgage where a fee-free payment method exists, insurance premiums, a planned flight or hotel, quarterly tax payments, tuition, a home project you'd scheduled anyway. Front-loading a large, already-budgeted purchase in month one is the single most reliable way to get most of the way there without changing your habits.
Where it goes wrong is when people treat the $5,000 as a target to hit rather than a byproduct of normal life. Buying gift cards you don't need, overpaying to put a bill on the card, or floating purchases for friends invites both fees and financial stress — and if you can't pay the statement in full, interest wipes out the bonus fast. A useful sanity check: if you couldn't comfortably absorb $5,000 of spending in three months at your current income, this offer isn't a fit today, and there's no shame in waiting for a version you can clear cleanly. For a fuller framework on matching a card's spend to your actual budget, our guide for moderate Chase spenders lays out the thresholds.
One more lever: if you already hold a no-fee Chase card like the Freedom Unlimited, the points you earn on it pool with the Preferred once you have a Sapphire in your account — so ordinary spending you keep on the Freedom still feeds the same Ultimate Rewards balance the bonus lands in.
The Bottom Line
Think of July 30 as the final boarding call for one of the best credit-card offers of the year — but boarding calls only matter if you have a ticket. The 100,000-point Sapphire Preferred offer is rare, rich, and genuinely worth acting on if you qualify. The deadline pressure that fills every headline is the least important variable here; eligibility is what decides whether these points are yours to earn.
Reduced to a checklist, in order:
- Check 5/24 first. Five or more new cards (any issuer) in 24 months and this almost certainly isn't your window.
- Confirm bonus eligibility. You qualify if you've never earned the Preferred's bonus — having or having had the Reserve no longer blocks you under the new once-per-lifetime rule.
- Let the pop-up decide the gray areas. Start the application; if Chase says you're not eligible for the bonus before the inquiry, back out with no credit impact.
- Pressure-test the spend. $5,000 should come from purchases you'd make anyway — never from manufactured spending.
- Apply early. Give the approval a day or two of runway ahead of the 9 a.m. ET cutoff.
If those boxes check, this is close to a no-brainer, and a rare chance to bank one of the largest single-card hauls Chase has ever run. If they don't, let it go without regret — a 75,000-point offer will still be here, and the right bonus at the right time beats the biggest bonus at the wrong one. Either way, start from the fundamentals of how Chase points work so the points you earn actually turn into the trip you wanted.
