Amex Platinum and the planned Priority Pass cap: how to decide whether the card still earns its fee for you

The short answer

Amex UK says that from 1 January 2028, Platinum Priority Pass access drops from unlimited to 20 complimentary visits a year for the main Cardmember and 10 for a Platinum Supplementary Cardmember. Accounts with £30,000 or more of eligible spend in 2027 keep unlimited access. The cap applies to Priority Pass lounges only. The rest of the Global Lounge Collection stays unlimited, and the cap doesn’t apply in 2026 or 2027.

If you make ten or fewer return trips a year with a Priority Pass lounge at both ends, 20 visits will cover your own entries, and a Platinum Supplementary Cardmember, if you have one, gets a separate 10. Check that against your own count. The exception hinges on one detail the product page doesn’t settle: whether a free guest’s entry uses up one of those visits. If it does, couples who travel together on one card could hit the limit much sooner. Chasing £30,000 only makes sense if that spend would already go on the Amex, or if moving it costs you less than the extra lounge visits are worth.

The clock starts well before the cap does. The spend that decides 2028 access starts counting on 1 January 2027, under two months away as of early November 2026.

What Amex has published

Everything below comes from the Amex UK Platinum product page, which is undated and was read on 4 November 2026. Amex says benefits are subject to change, so treat this as the published plan, not a guarantee.

• The cap: from 1 January 2028, Platinum Cardmembers get a limited number of complimentary Priority Pass visits each calendar year: 20 for the main Cardmember and 10 for a Platinum Supplementary Cardmember.
• The escape route: if eligible spend on the Platinum Account reaches £30,000 or more during 2027, you get unlimited Priority Pass visits throughout 2028. The same process repeats each year, with spend resetting on 1 January.
• What stays unlimited: access to all other lounges in the Global Lounge Collection. Amex describes the collection as more than 1,550 lounges across 140 countries but doesn’t split Priority Pass from the rest.
• Guests: the main and Platinum Supplementary Cardmembers can each bring one guest free. Additional guests are charged at the prevailing rate to the Platinum Card, and guest policies vary by location.
• Entry rules: you need a Priority Pass membership in your own name, a boarding pass for same-day travel and government ID. Access may also depend on availability or wait times.

Several things are missing from the page: how guests are counted, whether the two allowances can be pooled, the charge for a visit beyond the allowance, and what counts as eligible spend.

The timeline that matters

Three dates are easy to mix up:

• 2026: unchanged. Unlimited Priority Pass continues.
• 2027: still unlimited, but it’s the qualifying year. Your 2027 calendar-year spend decides your 2028 access.
• 2028: the first capped year, unless you qualified in 2027.

The qualifying period follows the calendar year, not your card membership year. If your fee renews in, say, September, you’ll be part-way through a qualifying year when it does.

There’s one more date to note. The page lists 8 complimentary lounge pre-booking entitlements per calendar year between 1 January 2026 and 31 December 2027. Leave pre-books out of any 2028 calculation unless Amex confirms them, but don’t assume they’ve been withdrawn either.

Count your own Priority Pass entries

Look at the past twelve months, or your realistic plan for 2028, and count:

1. Per person, not per trip. Each named member uses their own allowance.
2. Per departure. A return trip with a Priority Pass lounge at both ends is two entries. A connection where you use another lounge adds one more.
3. Priority Pass lounges only. Leave out lounges you reach through the non-Priority Pass parts of the Global Lounge Collection, since those stay unlimited. Amex’s page doesn’t list which lounges those are, so check each lounge you use rather than guessing from the airport.
4. Guests as a separate column. Note every time someone came in as your free guest. You’ll need this for the next step.

As an illustration, six return trips a year with a Priority Pass lounge at both ends is 12 entries for the main Cardmember, leaving eight of the 20 spare. Travelling alone, you’d need about ten such return trips to use the full allowance.

The guest question: plan for both answers

The page confirms each Cardmember can bring one free guest. It doesn’t say whether that guest’s entry counts against the 20 or 10. Until Amex confirms, run your count both ways so you can see whether the answer matters for you. Assuming guests count is only a cheap precaution if it doesn’t push you into moving spend towards £30,000 or adding a supplementary card you might not need, so get Amex’s answer before committing to either.

Take the six-trip traveller from above, now always travelling with a partner:

• Scenario A, the guest doesn’t count: the main Cardmember uses 12 visits and the partner enters free each time. That’s 12 of 20, with no supplementary card needed for lounges.
• Scenario B, the guest does count: each visit uses two entries, so the year costs 24. That’s over the main Cardmember’s 20, so on one card this couple hits the cap.

For a couple who mostly travel together, this one answer can decide the whole question, so ask Amex before relying on either scenario.

Couples: two cards or one card plus a guest

A Platinum Supplementary Cardmember holds their own allowance of 10. Because Priority Pass entry needs a membership in the Cardmember’s own name, each person in practice uses their own card. The page doesn’t say whether the 20 and 10 can be pooled, so assume they can’t.

Even under Scenario B, the six-trip couple can fit inside the allowances without pooling. The partner enters on their own card for 10 visits and goes in as the main Cardmember’s guest on the remaining two. If those guest entries count against the main card, it uses 14 of 20 in total (12 own entries plus 2 guest entries). This takes some tracking, and it relies on the supplementary allowance working the way you expect.

Two things aren’t confirmed: whether supplementary spend counts towards £30,000, and whether unlimited access in 2028 extends to the supplementary Cardmember. If your plan relies on either, ask Amex.

Supplementary Cardmembers also aren’t eligible for the dining credit, so a supplementary card adds lounge entries, not dining value. Check whether Amex charges a fee for a Platinum Supplementary card and, if it does, add it to the fee you test below. If you’re unsure how points work on a supplementary card, we’ve covered whose account supplementary points land in.

Is £30,000 of 2027 spend worth chasing?

£30,000 over a calendar year averages £2,500 a month. That’s simple arithmetic, not a target from Amex. If you’re at £8,000 by the end of June, you need about £3,700 a month for the rest of the year. Check your statements monthly rather than leaving it to December, and ask Amex how to track progress.

The decision comes down to one comparison: are the visits beyond your allowance worth more than the cost of getting to £30,000? Start with how much spend you’d need to move:

• Spend already on the Amex costs nothing extra. If you’d reach £30,000 anyway, you qualify by default, provided that spend counts as eligible. The page doesn’t define eligible spend.
• Spend you’d move from another card costs you whatever that card would have earned, plus any surcharges or acceptance problems with Amex.
• Spend you’d only make to hit the threshold is the most expensive kind, and almost never worth it for lounge access.

You’ll earn Membership Rewards on that spend, but this article doesn’t put a value on those points. Use your own cautious figure, and count only the difference between what the Amex earns and what your other card would have earned.

Then value the extra visits. Count only the Priority Pass entries above your allowance, and value each at what you’d otherwise pay or give up: a paid entry, an airport meal, or nothing if you’d simply skip the lounge. The page doesn’t state the charge for entries beyond the allowance, so that figure is yours to find out. If you expect 24 entries against a cap of 20, the £30,000 route is buying four visits, which rarely justifies moving much spend unless most of it already sits on the Amex.

The fee check, using only what you would use

Start with your own annual fee, plus any fee for a Platinum Supplementary card you hold or would add. Your fee year follows your renewal date, not the calendar year, so split it. Months up to 31 December 2027 are uncapped and include the documented pre-books. Only months in 2028 fall under the cap. If you renew before the end of 2027, you won’t yet know whether you’ll qualify, so project it from your 2027 run-rate. Subtract only the value you’d really get from each benefit:

1. Priority Pass: count every entry you expect across the whole fee year, with no cap for now. The cap is applied in the check below. Value each at your own cash alternative, and count only the value above what a cheaper card or option would give you.
2. Other Global Lounge Collection access: unlimited and unaffected by the change. Value it the same way, on lounges you actually use.
3. Global Dining credit: up to £200 a year at participating UK restaurants and £200 at participating restaurants abroad. The UK credit is split into £100 for January to June and £100 for July to December. Check the page for how the abroad credit is timed and which charges qualify. A half-year you miss is worth zero, so the £400 headline is the maximum, not the expected value. It’s main Cardmember only, requires enrolment, and is published to end on 30 June 2029, so it covers 2028.
4. Platinum Wellness: the headline is up to £350 combined across lululemon, Oura and Calm. At least the Oura part needs qualifying spend: it requires enrolling your Primary Platinum Card and then a single eligible purchase of £300 or more at ouraring.com for UK delivery. Only count it if you’d buy one anyway, and check the conditions on lululemon and Calm before counting those.
5. Anything else you can name and would use. Benefits you merely like don’t count. Count pre-books only for months up to 31 December 2027, and only if you’d use them. Leave them out of the 2028 part.

Check the result in this order:

• The uncapped total falls short of the fee: the card doesn’t earn its fee on your numbers, and the cap can only lower the total further. Consider cancelling before renewal.
• The uncapped total clears the fee and your 2028 entries fit within 20 (and 10 for a supplementary), including guest entries if they count: the cap doesn’t change your result. Keep the card.
• The uncapped total clears the fee but your 2028 entries exceed the allowance: work out two totals. One counts 2028 entries only up to 20 and 10. The other keeps them uncapped but subtracts the cost of moving spend to reach £30,000. Use the higher of the two. If it still clears the fee, keep the card. If it doesn’t, the cap is what changed the answer, and cancelling is worth considering.

For a step-by-step audit of the other Platinum benefits, see our earlier Platinum fee audit.

Three hypothetical travellers run through the method

These profiles are illustrations, not data on typical cardholders. Lounge counts are Priority Pass entries only.

Profile	Pattern	Entries if guests don’t count	Entries if guests count	Effect of the cap
Light solo traveller	4 return trips, Priority Pass at both ends	8 (main)	8 (main)	None. £30,000 isn’t worth chasing for lounges.
Couple, main plus supplementary	6 return trips together	12 (main), partner as guest	24, split as 14 main / 10 supplementary	None if they split visits across both cards. Tight if the supplementary allowance or pooling rules differ.
Heavy Priority Pass user	15 return trips solo, Priority Pass at both ends	30 (main)	30 (main)	10 entries over. Compare their value with the cost of reaching £30,000.

Only the heavy user faces a real decision. If most of their spend already goes on the Amex, qualifying costs little and the answer is easy. If it doesn’t, they should weigh ten entries at their own cash price against the earnings lost by moving the spend. They should also check whether some of those 30 visits could shift to Global Lounge Collection lounges outside Priority Pass, which stay unlimited.

What to ask Amex before 1 January 2027

Ask Amex these before you plan your 2027 spend:

• Does a free guest’s entry count as one of the main or supplementary Cardmember’s visits from 2028?
• Can the 20 and 10 allowances be pooled, or does each stay with the named member?
• What is charged for an entry beyond the allowance, and is it billed to the Platinum Card automatically?
• What counts as eligible spend towards £30,000, and does supplementary card spend count?
• If the account qualifies, does the supplementary Cardmember also get unlimited visits in 2028?
• How can I track progress towards £30,000 during 2027?
• Do the UK pre-book entitlements continue in 2028, and how do they interact with the allowance?
• How does qualification work for an account opened partway through 2027, or one cancelled and reopened?

Get answers in writing where you can. A secure-message reply is easier to plan around than a phone summary.

What to decide, and when

The cap applies only to Priority Pass, only from 2028, and leaves the rest of the Global Lounge Collection unlimited. For a solo traveller, exceeding 20 takes more than about ten Priority Pass return trips a year. For a couple travelling together, the answer can turn on the unanswered guest question. Check your own count rather than assuming either way.

The first decision comes in January 2027: whether you’ll route enough spend through the Amex to reach £30,000, judged on the monthly run-rate and the cost of moving spend. The second comes at renewal. Run the fee check with 2028 entries capped if you won’t qualify, projecting from your run-rate if you renew before the end of 2027. Value only credits you’d use, and leave out 2028 pre-books unless Amex confirms them. If the card still clears your fee, keep it. If it only cleared the fee on unlimited Priority Pass you won’t get, the cap has made the decision for you.