On September 10, 2026, Chase refreshed the Air Canada Aeroplan Credit Card with new earning rates, a higher annual fee, automatic status, and a bigger welcome offer. The earning rates, the automatic status and the welcome offer apply to new applicants and to everyone who already carries the card. The higher annual fee will affect existing card holders at renewal.
If you're holding this card for the 3X dining and grocery rate, the number that matters most is a specific date where that changes: December 31, 2026. Here's what actually changed, who comes out ahead, and what PointBagel does with a change like this.
What changed
| Before | After (effective 2026-09-10) | |
|---|---|---|
| Annual fee | $95 | $195 |
| Air Canada purchases | 3X | 3X, plus 2X from Air Canada as an automatic 25K member - up to 5X total |
| Travel (general) | 1X | 3X |
| Dining (incl. takeout/delivery) | 3X | 3X through December 31, 2026, then 2X |
| Groceries | 3X | 3X through December 31, 2026, then 2X |
| Gas stations | 1X | 2X (new category) |
| Everything else | 1X | 1X |
| Aeroplan status | Not included | Automatic Aeroplan 25K Status, no spend requirement |
| eUpgrade Credits | None | 5 per year |
| Air Canada redemption discount | None | 15% off eligible Air Canada flight redemptions |
| Annual statement credit | None | Up to $100 USD, as two $50 semi-annual credits |
| Car rental benefit | None | 4th Day Free at 11,000+ locations, starting January 2027 |
| Welcome offer | 60,000 points after $3,000 spend in 3 months | 75,000 points after $4,000 spend in 3 months, plus 40,000 points after $20,000 spend in 12 months |
Before-column figures (95 annual fee; 3X dining and groceries with 1X elsewhere; 60,000-point welcome offer at $3,000/3 months) are PointBagel's prior catalog entry for this card and are cited here as history, not current terms.
The earning-rate table looks like a straightforward upgrade at first glance - three new multiplier tiers where there used to be one flat rate - but the dining and grocery lines are the outliers where we need to pay attention because the rates actually go DOWN.
Who wins, who loses
Travel and gas spenders come out ahead. Going from 1X to 3X on general travel, and from 1X to 2X (a new category) on gas, is a straight rate increase. If your Aeroplan card carries a meaningful share of travel or gas spend, this is a real gain.
Air Canada flyers gain the most on paper. Up to 5X on Air Canada purchases, automatic 25K status with no minimum spend, 5 eUpgrade Credits a year, and 15% off eligible redemptions is a heavier benefits stack than the card carried before. None of that required a status match or a spending threshold to unlock - it's automatic for every cardmember as of September 10, 2026.
Grocery and dining-heavy holders take a real cut. The 3X rate on dining and groceries doesn't disappear at renewal or at your discretion - it steps down to 2X on January 1, 2027, for every cardmember, whether or not you asked for any part of this refresh. If groceries and restaurants are why you carry this card, budget for a lower rate starting that day, or start looking for a different card to move your spend to.
The fee more than doubled, and the new perks are what they hope to be the offset for the increased fee. The annual fee moved from $95 to $195 - a $100 increase - and the new stuff that showed up alongside it (the $100 in statement credits, the automatic status, the eUpgrade Credits, the redemption discount) is what Chase is pointing to as the reason. Whether that trade is fair depends entirely on whether you'd have paid for Aeroplan 25K status and eUpgrade Credits on their own, and whether you'll actually use $100 of Air Canada statement credit split across two $50 windows a year.
What PointBagel does about it
A change like this is exactly the kind of thing a flat "3X dining" line in a spreadsheet gets wrong the moment it happens. PointBagel's engine tracks earning rates as date-aware: a purchase is priced at the rate that applied on the date it happened, not at today's rate applied backward. So a grocery purchase you made under the old 3X dining/grocery rate keeps that rate in your history, and a purchase made after the January 1, 2027 step-down prices at 2X, without you having to remember which was in effect and when.
That's the same mechanism behind the grandfathered rates the Which Card tool (or equivalent tool called via your AI assistant connected to PointBagel) already accounts for elsewhere in the portfolio - the point of tracking a rate change by date, rather than overwriting it, is that your past transactions keep the math that was true when you made them.
As with every card and program PointBagel tracks, we verify every ratio, award chart, and earning rule we cite against the issuer's own published terms - not against what a card used to do, and not against a training-data memory of it.
Should you keep it
For a points power-user running several cards, the Aeroplan refresh is a "recompute, don't assume" moment rather than an obvious keep-or-drop call. The math changed on both sides of the ledger: it costs $100 more to carry, the benefits stack is heavier, the travel and gas rates are better, and the dining/grocery rate has a countdown on it. Whether the card still earns its keep depends on how your own spending splits across those categories, not on the headline "up to 5X" line.
If most of your spend on this card was dining and groceries, run the numbers again after January 1, 2027, when the rate you're actually earning changes. If it's travel, gas, or Air Canada itself, the refresh likely works in your favor as-is.
Facts and sources
- Chase press release: The Chase Air Canada Aeroplan Credit Card Refresh - Chase, September 10, 2026.
- Card product page: Air Canada Aeroplan Credit Card (Chase), which states the 3X dining and grocery rate as running "through December 31, 2026" and stepping to 2X afterward.
- PointBagel's own catalog and offer history for this card, which carried the prior terms ($95 fee, 3X dining and groceries, 60,000 points after $3,000 in 3 months) until Chase replaced them.
- PointBagel's Aeroplan point valuation (2.7 cents typical, 1.4 cents conservative, 4.9 cents aspirational; based on Star Alliance business-class award pricing). Unchanged by this refresh; cited here as background on what an Aeroplan point is currently worth, not as part of the refresh itself.
