Capital One Limits Venture X Lounge Guest Access, Additional Cardholder Benefits

Capital One Limits Venture X Lounge Guest Access, Additional Cardholder Benefits

by Gary Leff on June 3, 2025

Capital One is making major changes to lounge access for their Capital One Venture X product – restricted complimentary guests to cardmembers who spend $75,000 per calendar year (just like American Express has done); adding a fee for authorized user cards to access lounges (making them more like other issuers); and eliminating complimentary Priority Pass guests altogether (while keeping it on the business version of the card).

• Additional cardmembers lose free lounge access: Effective February 1, 2026, Capital One Venture X and Venture X Business cards can continue to have additional cardmembers at no annual fee, however they are unbundling lounge access from these cards. Lounge access is added for $125 per additional cardmember as an option. (You can also keep additional cardmembers on the account without lounge access, and those cards retain their no annual fee.)

• Capital One lounges will require $75,000 annual spend for free guests: Starting February 1, 2026, Capital One Venture X and Venture X Business cards will no longer allow complimentary guest access to the issuer’s own lounges. Guest access (2 complimentary guests at lounges, 1 at Landings) is restored for accounts that spend $75,000 per calendar year. Complimentary guest access is valid for the calendar year in which the spend requirement is met, and for the following year.

  
  Capital One Lounge, Washington Dulles

• Guest access pricing changes: Paid guests will be $45 per person – but now $25 apiece for guests under 18 (children under two are free).
• Venture X Priority Pass loses all complimentary guests: Even cardmembers spending heavily on the product will no longer receive free guests. In contrast, Venture X Business will receive 2 complimentary guests for the primary cardmember, and beginning February 1, 2026 this will extend to additional cardmembers. Paid guests are currently $35 apiece.

  I find it interesting that Venture X Business keeps complimentary guest privileges, but the economics of the card will be different, including likely higher average spend volume.

  
  Plaza Premium Lounge DFW Is Priority Pass-Accessible

My takeaways are,

1. This is broadly similar to the approach taken by American Express, requiring spend for guest access, and by American Express and Chase where an additional cardmember with lounge access is not free. Capital One just keeps the additional cardmember itself free, while charging for lounge access, which is smart because they’re not also pushing away the spending.
2. But while I like Capital One lounges much more than American Express lounges, Capital One doesn’t have nearly as many lounges! And their Priority Pass – with no guest access, and no longer honoring restaurant visits – becomes ‘worst in class’.
3. They are still at a lower annual fee price point than competitors like Amex Platinum and Chase’s Sapphire Reserve, and they aren’t adjusting the fee. We’ve seen increased annual fees and cuts to the value prop for both of those products, so it’s not surprising to see an adjustment to Venture X – my comment when the card was first launched about three and a half years ago was that it was likely too generous for the underlying economics (but probably needed to be to launch with a splash) so none of this surprises.

Capital One Landing, DCA

I wasn’t using the Venture X Priority Pass anyway. If you have more than one card that comes with Priority Pass, just switch away from the Capital One-sponsored version. This ultimately does not affect me. But for customers who don’t live in or travel primarily to or through cities with Capital One lounges, and who rely on Capital One for lounge access via Priority Pass especially when traveling with their families, this is a huge hit to the value proposition.

Still, Venture X is at a much lower price point than competitor cards and from my perspective the rebates I receive each year are worth the full annual fee – a $395 annual fee offset by a $300 travel portal credit (I buy a plane ticket) and 10,000 points which are worth well more than $100 to me. Plus, it earns 2x transferable points on all spend.

As a result, I will keep the card and I will keep spending on the card. As it happens I do put over $75,000 on the card each year. However, I’d say that getting a spouse or other player 2 their own card is better than paying the lounge access fee for an authorized user. Instead of paying $125 for a spouse to have lounge access, if they are approved for the card you’ve got benefits that effectively ‘cover’ the annual fee in its entirety.

• They’ll be eligible to earn the card’s initial bonus
• And be eligible for the $300 travel credit and 10,000 bonus points at renewal each year
• So the net cost is lower than paying for an additional cardmember’s lounge access.

Capital One Landing DCA

According to Capital One,

Since it was introduced in 2021, Venture X has stood out as a unique premium travel card with industry-leading rewards and benefits – including airport lounge access – at a $395 price point.

As airport lounges continue to grow in popularity across the industry, we’ve seen our customers increasingly encounter wait times to enter them. It is important to us that we maintain a great airport lounge experience for our Venture X and Venture X Business customers, while continuing to deliver best-in-class premium travel cards at an accessible price point.

To address this, we will be making some changes to lounge access for additional cardholders (authorized users and account managers) and guests. Venture X and Venture X Business primary cardholders will continue to receive complimentary access to over 1,300 lounges, including Capital One Lounges, Capital One Landings and Priority Pass lounges. We thought carefully about these changes, and we remain committed to delivering a differentiated premium travel card for our customers.

Capital One Lounge, Las Vegas

I don’t expect these changes as likely to improve lounge crowding. Capital One cards are not a driver of crowding for Priority Pass lounges. That’s a straight cost cut, aimed even at high spend cardmembers on the consumer product.

American Express dropped complimentary guest access to its lounges without spending $75,000 annually and that doesn’t seem to have helped with their lounge crowding. Maybe it’ll make a difference for Capital One, as many people using their lounges were free authorized user cards who won’t pay the lounge access fee – while Amex was already charging a fee for their additional Platinum cards?

Ironically, what helps most with crowding at Amex lounges is Capital One and Chase opening better lounges nearby. Staff at the Las Vegas Centurion lounge told me last month they were looking forward to the opening of the Capital One lounge nearby to help alleviate their lounge’s crowding. There will be some affect at the margin, but in a sense the value proposition of Venture X has been too generous.

I’ve written for decades that anything a few standard deviations better than the norm shouldn’t be expected to last. The good news is that Capital One’s lounges are very nice (and it’s a growing footprint), the card is generous for spend, and still comes at a lower price point than competitors. These changes don’t really affect my own use case at all, but each cardmember will have to evaluate their own circumstances.

I feel like, though, they shouldn’t just be taking away from cardmembers – they should be considering adding benefits for high spending ones at least. For instance, if lounge access is going to be spend-based why not let customers spending $150,000 or $200,000 per year skip the queues? American Express does this for their Centurion cardmembers.

Capital One Venture X

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