Do Avios Expire? The 36-Month Rule, and the 10-Second Fix

Yes. Avios expire after 36 months without activity. Not 36 months after you earned them: 36 months after the last time anything happened on the account. One earn or one spend, of any size, resets the whole balance’s clock.

That distinction is the entire game, and it’s the thing people get wrong. We’ve priced up more than one enquiry that started with “I had 180,000 Avios”. Past tense. Nobody loses Avios because the rule is harsh. They lose them because three years is long enough to forget an account exists.

How the clock actually works

The rule is the same across the Avios programs we deal in daily: British Airways, Iberia and Qatar Airways Privilege Club run on the same currency:

• The timer applies to the account, not to individual miles. Avios don’t age individually. Keep the account active and a balance from 2019 is as good as one from last week.
• Any activity resets it. Earning counts. Spending counts. The amount is irrelevant. A single Avios from a shopping-portal purchase does the job.
• 36 months is generous, and that’s the trap. Programs with 18-month timers train their members to pay attention. Three years trains you to forget.

Last checked against each program’s published terms: August 2026. Expiry policies do move (BA has reshaped its program more than once), so treat the number as current, not permanent.

Keeping a balance alive costs nothing

Ranked by how little effort they take, the resets we actually use:

1. Move Avios between your own BA and Qatar accounts. Linking the two and transferring even 1,000 Avios across is free, instant, and counts as activity on both sides. If you hold both accounts, this is the whole answer. One warning if Iberia is your home program: Iberia’s terms do not count an Avios transfer as activity, so a move keeps a BA or Qatar clock alive and leaves the Iberia one running. Reset Iberia with an earn or a redemption instead.
2. Buy one thing through the shopping portal. An earn of 12 Avios resets 180,000 of them. The maths of that never stops being funny.
3. A co-brand card or an e-store purchase you were making anyway. Anything that posts to the account counts.

What we’d never suggest is panic-redeeming a big balance for a bad rate because the deadline is close. A 4,000-Avios magazine-tier redemption to save the balance beats burning 100,000 on a redemption you didn’t want.

If the balance is short rather than expiring

The other half of the Avios conversations we have: the balance is alive and well, it’s just 40,000 short of the Qsuite redemption it exists for. Topping up through the airline’s own buy-Avios pages is priced for impulse, not for value. That is where a per-mile rate from a trader undercuts it, usually by a distance. The live rates are on our British Airways, Iberia and Qatar Airways pages, with every Avios rate compared side by side, and the quote states the full cost before you commit to anything.

The 10-second habit

Put a calendar reminder eleven months out, not thirty-five. If the account’s been quiet for a year, trigger any of the resets above and move on with your life. Avios are the easiest major currency to keep alive indefinitely; the only people who lose them are the ones who never looked.