Air India Maharaja Club Points Fest 2026: where the 50% bonus actually lands

This offer has closed. The Points Fest ran through May 2026 and ended on 31 May. It is kept here as a record: Maharaja Club runs transfer promotions repeatedly, and the tier structure and bank exclusions below are the benchmark the next one gets judged against.

Most airline transfer promotions are too thin to matter. Air India's Maharaja Club Points Fest was not one of them. The headline was a tiered bonus that reached 50 percent on top of whatever reward balance was converted, capped at two lakh bonus points per partner, with the bonus paid in addition to the points that would have transferred at the regular ratio.

Two things about this offer surprised members on closer reading. First, the mechanic was graded so a single large transfer beat several smaller ones, which inverts the usual instinct to chunk conversions across the month. Second, the bank-by-bank exclusions were sharper than the landing page admitted at first glance, and the cards that got cut out were the ones holding the largest accrued balances in the Indian market.

What follows is a walk through what the bonus paid, which cards in the catalogue were positioned to use it, who was left out, and whether the offer was worth registering for at all.

What the bonus actually pays

A graded structure does most of the work. Each band stacks on top of the points that arrive at the standard transfer ratio.

• 1 to 25,000 points converted: 10 percent bonus
• 25,001 to 50,000 points: 20 percent bonus
• 50,001 to 75,000 points: 30 percent bonus
• 75,001 to 100,000 points: 40 percent bonus
• Above 100,000 points: 50 percent bonus

Only the first eligible conversion with each partner counts toward the bonus. Two smaller transfers from the same bank do not chain into a higher tier. The single-shot rule is the part most members miss; the practical advice is to consolidate any planned transfer into one large conversion per partner during May to hit the top band.

The maximum bonus is two lakh bonus Maharaja Points per partner. A member transferring across, say, HDFC, SBI, and ICICI in the same month can therefore stack three separate 50 percent bonuses, each capped independently. Air India credits the bonus points within 60 days after the offer window closes, which puts the bonus arrival window in July 2026 for transfers made late in May.

One step is non-negotiable: members must register on the Maharaja Club Points Fest landing page before the qualifying transfer. Transfers made before registration do not earn the bonus, retroactive correction is not on offer, and Air India's customer service has historically refused to amend registration timing on similar campaigns.

Which cards are positioned to use this

The pickmycard.in catalogue includes three cards whose underlying reward currency converts to Maharaja Points and which sit at fee bands where the transfer math earns its keep this month.

The HDFC Diners Club Black, at a ₹10,000 joining fee and ₹10,000 annual fee, accumulates HDFC reward points that route to Air India through the SmartBuy transfer programme. A holder with a balance of 100,000 reward points sitting unused is exactly the user for whom the 50 percent bonus tier is built. Higher earn rates on SmartBuy redemptions mean balances stack up faster than on most HDFC products.

A tier down sits the HDFC Regalia, at a ₹2,500 joining fee and ₹2,500 annual fee, on the same SmartBuy transfer rails as the Diners Black. Earn rate is lower and the bonus categories thinner, but a holder with two or three years of accumulated Regalia points who has not converted recently is well positioned to clear the top tier with a single transfer.

Outside HDFC, the SBI Card PRIME, at a ₹2,999 joining fee and ₹2,999 annual fee, carries SBI reward points that transfer directly into the Maharaja Club balance. SBI Prime holders who travel internationally once a year are the natural audience here; the cap of two lakh bonus points is generous enough to absorb most realistic balances even on a card that earns modestly.

Three other paths deserve a mention even though their specific issuing cards sit outside the current catalogue. SBI's Air India SBI co-branded credit card transfers directly into Maharaja Points by design and is a clean fit for the offer. ICICI Bank is on the partner list, with transfer paths active on its premium card line. Kotak's Solitaire programme also participates. Members holding any of these had the same one-shot, consolidate-first calculus to run during the May window.

Who is shut out, and why it matters

Axis Bank cardholders are excluded from the Convert and Earn portion of this campaign. Any reward points transferred from any Axis Bank credit card during May 2026 will land at the regular Maharaja Club ratio with no bonus. HSBC India is excluded on the same terms. Club Vistara co-branded cards from Axis, SBI, IDFC, and IndusInd are also outside the offer.

The Axis exclusion is the one that matters most in the Indian market. Holders of Axis Magnus, Axis Atlas, Axis Horizon, and Axis Reserve, all of which historically used Air India as a transfer destination, get nothing extra for converting during the offer window. The standard transfer ratios remain available; the bonus does not.

For Axis cardholders specifically, the practical advice is to defer Air India transfers until a future campaign that does cover the bank, and to use the May 2026 window to transfer to other Axis EDGE Miles partners instead. KrisFlyer and Etihad Guest remain available at the established 1:1 ratio, and the recently added British Airways and Finnair Plus partners at 2:1 give holders an alternative redemption path for the same balance.

Whether the offer was worth registering for

The Points Fest was the strongest Air India transfer promotion of the year to that point. A 50 percent top tier sat well ahead of the routine 10 to 25 percent promotional windows Maharaja Club had run in earlier months, and the two-lakh cap per partner was wide enough to absorb most realistic balances.

What to do depended on which bank a member held points with. HDFC, SBI, ICICI and Kotak holders with idle balances of 50,000 reward points or more had reason to register, consolidate into a single large transfer per bank to clear the top bonus tier, and lock the conversion in before the 31 May cutoff. Axis and HSBC holders were better off sitting it out for Air India and converting into other partners.

The points credit timeline ran to roughly 60 days after the offer ended, so bonuses from this window landed through July 2026.

If you are reading this for the next one: the two structural features to check first are whether the bonus is graded by transfer size — which rewards consolidating rather than chunking — and which banks are excluded. In May 2026 those exclusions cut out Axis and HSBC, the two issuers whose holders had the largest accrued balances, which is what made a headline 50 percent thinner in practice than it looked.

Sources

• HDFC Diners Club Black Metal Edition Credit Card
• HDFC Regalia Credit Card
• SBI Card PRIME
• Air India Maharaja Club Points Fest, official landing page

Changelog

• 2026-08-15: Converted to a dated retrospective. The offer closed on 31 May 2026, but the page had gone on describing it in the present tense — "running through May 2026", "should register on the Air India site", "lock the conversion in well before the 31 May cutoff" — for eleven weeks. Past-tensed throughout, added an explicit closed notice at the top, and replaced the expired call to action with what to check when Maharaja Club runs the next one. The page stays up rather than being retired: it still earns search traffic, and it is the benchmark the next Points Fest gets read against.