Chase & IHG One Rewards have a portfolio of co-branded credit cards . Three of the four cards — The Brand New IHG One Rewards Premier Select Credit Card ( learn more ), The New IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card ( learn more ), and The New IHG One Rewards Business Credit Card ( learn more ) — offer the opportunity to earn free night award certificates, which can be extremely valuable.

I’d argue that these cards are absolutely worth having, primarily for the free night certificates, as they help with justifying the annual fee. In this post, I’d like to take a close look at everything you need to know about earning and redeeming IHG One Rewards free night certificates.

Three of IHG One Rewards’ co-branded Chase credit cards offer free night awards as an anniversary benefit, with no spending required:

On top of that, two of the cards offer a second free night award annually based on spending:

Below is a chart showing all five opportunities across three cards to earn free night awards with IHG cards currently open to new cardmembers.

Let me emphasize that the IHG card portfolio recently underwent a refresh , and free night awards on previously issued cards are still worth 40,000 points. That will continue to be the case through the end of 2026, and then as of 2027, the newly issued certificates will get the higher value of 50,000 points. The same applies to those who have the legacy IHG Select Card, which is no longer open to new applicants — as of 2027, those certificates will also be worth up to 50,000 points, and will be eligible for top-offs.

Sometimes IHG also has promotions offering free night awards through non-credit card means, but that’s not a consistent aspect of the program.

The IHG Premier Select Card , IHG Premier Card , and IHG Business Card , all offer anniversary free night certificates, meaning you get your first certificate roughly 12 months after you open your card (you don’t get a certificate the first year, since most people don’t celebrate their zero year anniversary). 😉