Air France KLM credit card will convert to Visa Signature, adds 3x dining & improved elite earning

The Air France KLM credit card has long been a World Elite Mastercard. However, on March 20, 2026, the card will change to a Visa Signature Credit Card. That’s going to add some benefits to the card that might make it more intriguing for some.

Air France KLM Visa Signature adds 3x dining, more XP earnings

Starting on March 20, 2026, the Air France KLM card will become a Visa Sgnature credit card. Existing cardholders will get a new account number to replace the existing card.

As of January 16, 2026, the card has already added some new benefits:

• 3x dining
• Earn an additional 80XP on account anniversary after you spend $15,000 to $24,999 on purchases within the anniversary year. This stacks on top of the 20 XP offered for all cardholders at anniversary for a total of 100XP.
• Earn an additional 60 XP on the account anniversary after you spend $25K or more on purchases within the anniversary year for a total of 160 XP.

The card is otherwise more or less unchanged, continuing to charge an $89 annual fee and awarding 1.5 miles per dollar spent on unbonused purchases. I would assume that as a Visa Signature it will include some standard Visa Signature benefits like car rental coverage, but we’ll have to see the final guide to benefits to be able to confirm any additions there.

There are two key changes here for most people. First, it will be possible to use this card at Costco once it becomes a Visa card. Second, the card gives a nice head start to status with spend.

Flying Blue elite status requirements

Flying Blue has 3 tiers of elite status: Silver, Gold, and Platinum. The program functions signifncantly differently than other programs in that once you reach a tier, you keep that tier for 12 calendar months and your status metric resets to 0, after which you have 12 months to reach the next tier. While most programs operate on a calendar year basis, Flying Blue has a rolling 12-month calendar.

In other words, to achieve elite status, you need to earn:

• 100 XPs within 12 months for Silver status
• An additional 180 XPs within 12 months after achieving Silver status to reach Gold status
• An additional 300 XPs within 12 months after achieving Gold status to reach Platinum status

I always used to think it was weird to see status levels described like that. You could sort of alternatively think of it as 100 XPs for Silver, 280 XPs for Gold, and 580 XPs for Platinum, but the clock keeps resetting to 0 as you achieve the next level, so you would actually have more than one year to achieve Platinum status.

In other words, opened the card now and spent your $25K over the course of your cardmember year, you would earn 160 XP after anniversary in January 2027. You would then have 12 months to reach an additional 180 XPs to reach Gold status. Once you reach Gold status, you would have 12 months to earn 300 XPs to earn Platinum.

The XPs earned from spend here then could certainly reduce your path to status significantly or to requalifying for a level of status, which just requires the difference between the level below it and the level for which you are requalifying. In other words, if you achieve Gold status, you only need 180 XPs within the next 12 months to keep Gold status, so even someone with modest Flying Blue activity would likely be able to maintain Gold status mostly through spend.

Applications set to open 1/21/26

Note that applications for the Visa Signature version of the card are expected to open on January 21, 2026, so if you are interested in the new version of this card and you don’t already have it, you might want to wait a few days. According to View from the Wing, the introductory offer is expected to include 70,000 miles and 100 XPs after spending $3,000 within 90 days of account opening. That beats the current Mastercard offering, so it is probably worth waiting.

The nice thing is that you’ll get Silver out of the gate with the 100 XPs upon approval. What I don’t know is whether the XPs earned from spend will post fast enough at anniversary to move you close to Gold or whether the counter will reset before those post. Time will tell. Either way, it makes sense to wait a few days on this card.

H/T: View from the Wing

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