Chase raised the welcome bonuses on all three Southwest personal credit cards to 80K, 85K, and 90K points, with the offers tied to a Dec. 2, 2026 application deadline.
The Priority card pays 90K points after $3K in purchases in the first three months and carries a $229 annual fee. The Premier pays 85K after $2K in spend with a $149 fee. The Plus pays 80K after $1K in spend with a $99 fee. None of the annual fees are waived in year one. Each card also waives the first checked bag for the cardholder and up to eight passengers on the same reservation, a perk Southwest no longer gives every traveler. Southwest's new lounges have their own cardholder angle.
Priority Carries the Largest Southwest Welcome Bonus
Welcome bonus points on Chase Southwest personal cards, as of Nov. 3, 2026
Bar chart. Welcome Bonus Points. Southwest Plus: Bonus Points 80K. Southwest Premier: Bonus Points 85K. Southwest Priority: Bonus Points 90K.
Two weeks before the increase, the same Chase pages showed 50K, 55K and 60K on the three cards. Bonuses rose 30K across the board, though Premier now requires $500 more in spend and Priority $1K more.
Why Dec. 2 is the hard stop
Southwest Airlines is retiring Companion Pass qualifying points after Dec. 31, 2026. From Jan. 1, 2027, welcome bonuses, referral bonuses, anniversary points, and bonus-category points stop counting toward the pass. The broader Rapid Rewards overhaul is its own story.
The replacement currency is tier qualifying points. Next year, three Companion Pass trips require 95K tier qualifying points or 75 qualifying one-way flights. Unlimited trips require 140K points or 100 flights. From Jan. 1, 2027, every Southwest card earns 1 tier qualifying point per dollar spent regardless of category, so the cards keep building status even after bonuses stop counting toward the pass.
Southwest carved out one exception for the handoff.
Cardholders approved by that date can have their bonus points count as 2026 qualifying points, even if the spending threshold is met in early 2027. The resulting pass stays valid through Dec. 31, 2027.
A bonus alone won't finish the run
The current pass still requires 135K Companion Pass qualifying points in a calendar year. The pass lets a designated companion fly with the cardholder for just the taxes and fees. A single Priority card bonus covers two-thirds of that.
Someone opening the Priority card lands at roughly 93K points once the bonus and required spend post. Counting the 10K cardholder boost, that leaves about 32K points to find elsewhere, and those supplemental points must post before the end of 2026.
Chase's rules narrow the field further. A personal Southwest card is not available to current cardmembers or to anyone who received a welcome bonus on one in the past 24 months. The 5/24 rule, which blocks applicants with five or more new card accounts in two years, still applies.
Business cards sit outside that personal-card restriction. Pairing Priority with the Performance Business card costs $528 in first-year fees.
Chase says bonuses take six to eight weeks to post after qualifying, so anyone applying near the deadline will be watching their Rapid Rewards balance well into 2027.
