United is targeting some cardholders with an upgrade offer awarding either 15,000 bonus miles or a $150 statement credit. Some of these offers require only a single purchase after upgrading, while others require $1,500 of spend on their card within three months of upgrading.
The Deals
- There are several different targeted upgrade offers for select United cardholders:
- Earn 15,000 bonus miles when upgrading to the United℠ Explorer Card & making your first purchase by April 30, 2026
- Earn 15,000 bonus miles when upgrading to the United℠ Explorer Card by April 30, 2026 & spending $1,500 in the first three months
- Get a $150 statement credit when upgrading to the United℠ Explorer Card & making your first purchase by April 30, 2026
- Earn 15,000 bonus miles when upgrading to the United Quest℠ Card & making your first purchase by April 30, 2026
- Earn 15,000 bonus miles when upgrading to the United Quest℠ Card by April 30, 2026 & spending $1,500 in the first three months
Key Terms
- Please allow up to 8 weeks after the last day of the promotional period for bonus miles or statement credit to post to your account.
Quick Thoughts
I currently have a United Gateway℠ Card and received an email for the second offer listed above: upgrade to a United Explorer card and get 15,000 bonus miles when spending $1,500 within the first three months. When checking out the upgrade page, the URL had a format that suggested there might be other targeted offers out there. Sure enough, by playing around with the URL it turned out that there are five different targeted offers for eligible cardholders.
Three are for upgrading to the Explorer card, so that’ll be for cardholders of the no annual fee Gateway card (and potentially some kind of legacy United cards that are no longer available). The two upgrade offers to the Quest card are presumably for existing Explorer cardholders, but perhaps some Gateway cardholders are being targeted for that offer too.
I’m very much tempted by my upgrade offer. While 15,000 bonus miles for $1,500 spend isn’t an enormous return compared to standard welcome offers, it does represent a return of 10 miles per dollar on top of the card’s usual earnings which isn’t too shabby, plus it effectively offsets the card’s $150 annual fee.
The inclusion of two United Club℠ one-time passes each year is enticing because I’m flying United a couple of times next month and at least one of the airports I’ll be flying out of doesn’t seem to have any convenient lounge options for me otherwise. The 2x $50 United Hotels statement credit could also come in handy when booking cheap paid stays where that statement credit will offset a large portion of the hotel cost.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
I have the Gateway. Would consider an upgrade to the Quest. I’m Golf for Life so the free checked bags don’t mean anything but JSX is flying out of Carlsbad now so I could easily use that credit.
I was targeted for this in Nov25. I upgraded and my one purchase was for basic economy flights to Madrid paid partially with the Explorer card, but mostly with travel bank. I had to pay partially with the card to get free checked luggage for me and a companion. Round trip total – three hundred something – per passenger.
I have been targeted for this a couple of time in the past two years, back when it was 10,000 miles and the AF was still $95 and again for 15,000 miles.