The £0 Annual Fee Amex Strategy: Earning 40,000 Points in 2026

Paying £300 a year for a credit card is a massive psychological hurdle. I completely get it. When you are just starting out with travel rewards, dropping that kind of cash on the British Airways Premium Plus card feels like a gamble, especially now that the first-year-free era of the Amex Gold card is firmly behind us. But you do not need to pay premium fees to build a meaningful points balance in 2026.

This guide breaks down a precise, mathematically sound strategy to generate around 40,000 Membership Rewards points using purely £0 annual fee cards. That is enough to convert into 40,000 Avios—buying you two return off-peak Economy flights to Athens or Istanbul, or a one-way Club Europe ticket on British Airways’ reshuffled 2026 A380 short-haul routes. At our standard valuation of 1p per point, you are looking at £400 of tax-free value for zero upfront cost.

We are going to use the Amex Rewards Credit Card to do this. It is the most underrated product in the American Express UK lineup, and if you have a partner or a trusted family member to play “two-player mode” with, the returns are brilliant.

Why the Amex Rewards Credit Card is your best zero-fee option in 2026

The Amex Rewards Credit Card is the best free entry point into the UK points game because it earns flexible Membership Rewards points rather than being locked to a single airline, and it charges absolutely nothing for the privilege. It is a credit card, rather than a charge card, and it has a permanent £0 annual fee.

Right now, the standard welcome bonus is 10,000 Membership Rewards points when you spend £2,000 in your first three months. But you should never accept the standard offer. If you apply via a referral link from an existing Amex member, that bonus gets bumped to 12,000 points. You also earn 1 point for every £1 spent on the card.

Flexibility is the main reason I recommend this card over co-branded airline cards. British Airways is currently dealing with a string of operational and IT blunders—just this week we saw them accidentally downgrading upgraded Club accounts and randomly extending status for members on zero tier points. Earning flexible Membership Rewards points means you are insulated from airline-specific chaos. If BA devalues Avios tomorrow, you can simply transfer your Amex points to Virgin Atlantic, Hilton Honors, or Marriott Bonvoy instead.

The free BA Amex trap (and why you should avoid it)

You should avoid the free British Airways Amex because the sign-up bonus is poor and the companion voucher it generates is artificially restricted. Many beginners default to the blue BA Amex because it has no fee, but the maths simply does not work in your favour.

The free BA Amex offers a measly 5,000 Avios sign-up bonus. Compare that to the 12,000 Membership Rewards points you get from an Amex Rewards Credit Card referral. Both cards earn 1 point per £1 spent, but the BA card forces those points directly into your Executive Club account every month.

The real trap is the Companion Voucher. On the free BA Amex, you need to spend £15,000 in a year to trigger the voucher, and it is strictly limited to Economy class redemptions. Paying long-haul taxes and fees for an Economy cash ticket is rarely a good deal. Earning flexible points faster on the Amex Rewards Credit Card is a far smarter play.

The elephant in the room: Virgin Atlantic’s 36,000 point April 2026 promo

Virgin Atlantic’s April 2026 promotion is currently offering up to 36,000 points on their free Reward Mastercard, which sets a massive new benchmark for £0 fee UK travel cards. I cannot write a guide about free points in 2026 without acknowledging how aggressive Virgin is being right now.

If you fly routes that Virgin Atlantic actually serves—like Orlando, New York, or Barbados—you should absolutely look at that Mastercard offer. It is the highest free-card bonus we have seen this year. However, Virgin points are notoriously harder to spend than Avios if you want to travel short-haul around Europe. That is why our core strategy remains focused on American Express and the flexibility of Membership Rewards. Amex points give you options; Virgin points give you Virgin.

The exact two-player strategy to hit 40,000 points for free

To hit the 40,000 point threshold without paying fees, you need two people—usually a couple, but any two trusted adults living at the same address works. You will chain together referral bonuses, sign-up bonuses, and supplementary card bonuses over a 90-day period.

Step 1: Player one applies via a referral link

Player one finds a referral link for the Amex Rewards Credit Card. This bumps the starting bonus from 10,000 to 12,000 points. They apply, get approved, and now have three months to hit the £2,000 minimum spend target.

Step 2: Add a supplementary card

Amex is currently offering a 3,000 point bonus for adding your first supplementary cardholder to an Amex Rewards Credit Card. Player one adds player two as a supplementary cardholder. This costs nothing, and the points usually post within a few days. You both use these cards for all household spending—groceries, petrol, council tax via a workaround, and daily expenses—to clear the £2,000 target.

Step 3: Refer player two

Once player one has the card, they generate their own referral link and send it to player two. Referring a friend from this card currently yields a referral bonus of between 4,000 and 9,000 points, depending on the multiplier Amex has targeted your account with. Let’s assume a conservative middle ground of 6,000 points for this example. Player one gets those points the moment player two is approved.

Step 4: Player two repeats the process

Player two applies for their own Amex Rewards Credit Card using player one’s link. They get the elevated 12,000 point sign-up bonus. Once the card arrives, player two adds player one as a supplementary cardholder, triggering another 3,000 point bonus. They now shift all household spending to player two’s card to hit the second £2,000 spend target.

The final maths

Let’s look at exactly what this household has generated from £4,000 of normal everyday spending over a few months, without paying a single annual fee:

• Player one sign-up bonus: 12,000 points
• Player one supplementary card bonus: 3,000 points
• Player one base spend earnings: 2,000 points
• Player one referral bonus: 6,000 points
• Player two sign-up bonus: 12,000 points
• Player two supplementary card bonus: 3,000 points
• Player two base spend earnings: 2,000 points

That totals exactly 40,000 Membership Rewards points. Even if your referral bonus drops to the minimum 4,000 points, you still walk away with 38,000 points, which is remarkably close to the target and easily topped up with everyday spending.

Navigating the 24-month Amex rule

You are only eligible for the Amex Rewards Credit Card sign-up bonus if you have not held a personal Amex card earning Membership Rewards in the last 24 months. This rule trips up a lot of beginners, so let’s be very clear about what counts.

If you have held a Gold, Platinum, or the Amex Rewards Credit Card itself in the past two years, you will not get the bonus. Amex will still approve you for the card, but you will get zero welcome points.

However, if you have only held a co-branded card—like the British Airways Amex, the Marriott Bonvoy Amex, or a Nectar Amex—you are eligible for the Amex Rewards Credit Card bonus. Co-branded cards earn their own specific currencies, not Membership Rewards, so they do not block you from this £0 fee strategy.

Using the ARCC as a life raft for your Membership Rewards

The Amex Rewards Credit Card is the perfect life raft for your points if you want to cancel a premium Amex card to dodge a renewal fee in 2026. This is a tactic every points collector should understand.

If you currently hold an Amex Gold (£195 fee) or Platinum (£650 fee) and you do not want to pay for another year, cancelling the card will forfeit any Membership Rewards points left in your account. You could transfer them to an airline immediately, but that forces you to guess which airline you might want to fly in the future.

Instead, apply for the free Amex Rewards Credit Card before you cancel your premium card. Because both cards earn the exact same currency, your Membership Rewards account stays alive. You can safely close the Gold or Platinum card, avoid the hefty fee, and keep your points sitting safely in the free account until you are ready to spend them.

My honest verdict on the zero-fee strategy

Honestly, I think this is the smartest way for any beginner to start collecting points in the UK right now. The £300 fee on the British Airways Premium Plus card makes sense if you spend heavily and explicitly want a 2-for-1 Club World voucher. Amex and BA recently launched a new pathway to earn BA Bronze status via Amex spend and Sustainable Aviation Fuel contributions, but it requires serious capital outlay. For someone just testing the waters, it is overkill.

The two-player £0 fee strategy strips away all the risk. You are not paying for the privilege of collecting points, you are not locked into British Airways while they sort out their IT mess, and you are building a flexible balance that can actually get you to Athens or Istanbul for your 2027 school holidays.

If you are ready to dive deeper into maximising your everyday spending, explore more guides on Points Uncovered.