The State of Points Auctions: 2026 Midyear Report

Points auction data for the first half of 2026 is now in, and this is the first edition of a report we plan to publish twice a year. Between January 1 and June 30, PointAuctions.com tracked 2,180 loyalty-program auctions to a close across 12 programs, and 1,665 of them carry a verified winning bid rather than a last-observed number. Nobody else compiles this, so consider it the niche's only industry report. Below is what H1 actually showed: how many auctions closed, what the typical winning bid was by program, the five biggest results, how often nobody bid, and the trends we are carrying into the second half.

Every figure in this report is frozen to the January 1 through June 30, 2026 window, verified as of June 30, 2026. Later closes and post-close verifications keep landing in our live archive, so the always-current numbers on each program's stats page will drift above the H1 snapshot below; that is by design, and the next edition will re-baseline at year end.

A word on method before the numbers, because it governs every figure here. We report actual points and miles in the currency of each program. A Marriott point, an Avios, and a SkyMile are different currencies, so medians are best read within a program, not across them, and we never convert points to dollars. We also separate a verified winning bid (a price we confirmed after the auction closed) from a last-observed bid (the highest number we saw while the auction was live, on a platform that hides the true final). Headline medians below use verified closes only. The full methodology sits at the bottom.

The half-year in one paragraph

Of the 2,180 auctions that closed in H1, 2,175 (99.8%) closed with a price on record, and 1,665 of those are verified winning bids. Marriott Bonvoy Moments alone accounted for 61% of every close we tracked, which is worth keeping in mind whenever a pooled number looks like "the market." Across all verified closes, the median winning bid was 82,500 points. Sports and entertainment did almost all the volume, together making up 85% of closes. And a striking 45% of auctions that carried a bid count drew fewer than five bids, so for every headline bidding war there were roughly as many lots that went to whoever showed up.

Median verified winning bid, by program

Here is the typical (median) verified winning bid for each program with a large enough sample to report one, using verified H1 closes only. We only headline a program at 10 or more verified closes; the smaller samples below the table are shown for completeness, not as reliable market rates.

Hilton posts the most expensive median we track because its H1 was dominated by McLaren F1 hospitality, while Marriott's 1,164 verified closes make it by far the deepest sample and the closest thing to a market baseline we have. Below the reporting threshold, and shown only as thin signals, sit Alaska (Atmos) at a 437,500-point median on 6 verified closes, and IHG One Rewards and Emirates Skywards at 2 verified closes apiece. Treat those three as anecdotes, not rates.

Delta SkyMiles is a special case worth flagging. Delta closed 176 auctions in H1, but it takes every auction offline the instant it ends, so we hold zero verified finals for it. Every Delta figure anywhere is a last-observed floor, and we deliberately keep it out of the verified medians above.

The five biggest verified closes of H1

Every one of the top five was sports: three F1 hospitality lots and two World Cup ticket packages. These are verified winning bids.

1. 4,410,000 points, Hilton Honors, for the McLaren Mastercard F1 Team experience at the Canadian Grand Prix. This is the single largest verified close in our entire archive.

2. 3,512,474 points, Hilton Honors, for a McLaren F1 VIP weekend at the Monaco Grand Prix.

3. 3,002,500 points, Marriott Bonvoy, for two FIFA World Cup 2026 tickets (one of the Visa cardmember packages).

4. 3,000,000 points, Marriott Bonvoy, for another two-ticket FIFA World Cup 2026 package.

5. 2,660,000 points, Hilton Honors, for a McLaren F1 VIP weekend at the British Grand Prix.

Two things stand out. First, the top of the market is a two-horse race between Hilton's F1 hospitality and Marriott's World Cup inventory. Second, price and competition are not the same thing: the top close drew only 2 bids, while the most contested single auction of the half was a Marriott Moments Celine Dion package that took 240 bids to a verified 1,302,500 points. A blockbuster price can come from two determined bidders or from a hundred. For the fuller program-by-program picture behind these headliners, see what 2,000 closed auctions reveal about each program, and the permanent Marriott record sits at closed Marriott Bonvoy auctions.

How often nobody really bid

Across the 2,117 H1 closes that carry a bid count, 45% drew fewer than five bids. That is the number to remember: the quiet end of this market is nearly half of it. But the average hides enormous spread between programs.

Read that as a map of where competition is thin. Wyndham, Choice, and Accor are where a small balance and a little patience still win experiences outright, a pattern we dug into in our bargain hunter's guide to uncontested auctions. Qatar and United sit at the crowded end. (Delta looks uncontested at 3% in the raw data, but that is an artifact of last-observed bid counts on a platform we cannot verify, so we leave it out of this ranking.)

The busiest categories

Two categories ran the show in H1. Sports and entertainment together were 85% of everything that closed; food, travel, and arts split the remaining 15%.

If you are hunting the quieter categories for thinner competition, that scarcity is the point: fewer lots, but often fewer rivals too. In our tracking, the same programs that lead the low-competition table above (Wyndham, Choice, Accor) are also where those quieter culinary and travel lots most often close with only a handful of bidders.

Two trends we are carrying into H2

We widened our program coverage through the half. We began systematically tracking around eight programs in mid-March 2026, then added Qatar Privilege Club and IHG One Rewards in early April, with World of Hyatt and Emirates Skywards joining by late April and early May, reaching 12 programs with tracked closes. That expansion is why our monthly close counts climb through the spring rather than any single program getting busier: 142 closes in March, 872 in April, then settling into the 550 to 600 range in May and June. Read the monthly line as our coverage maturing, not as auction supply exploding.

The verified share held up. Three in four H1 closes (76%) landed with a confirmed winning bid, despite adding programs mid-stream and despite Delta contributing 176 unverifiable closes on its own. That is the number we most want to grow in H2, because a verified final is the only price we will ever call a "winning bid."

What we are watching for H2

The second half is stacked with the events that produce our biggest numbers.

• The FIFA World Cup settles. The tournament runs into July, with the final at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford on July 19, 2026. Marriott's Visa cardmember packages, some of which closed in H1 in the millions of points, point at events we will only be able to verify as the matches actually happen. Expect World Cup finals to headline the H2 report.

• The F1 season keeps running. After a European first half, the calendar heads to Singapore in October, Austin later that month, then Las Vegas and Qatar in November. Hilton's McLaren hospitality drove H1's top of the board, and there is a full autumn of it left.

• NFL returns. The 2026 regular season kicks off in September, and Marriott Bonvoy runs NFL Moments auctions in the fall. Football is a reliable H2 volume driver we did not see in H1.

Live auctions across all of that are open right now:

There are 395 auctions live across every program we track as of this writing, and the ones closing soonest are above. If you want the next big result to find you instead of the other way around, browse live auctions and set an alert on a program that matches your balance.

The full permanent record, every verified close behind this report, lives in the results archive, and the F1 board specifically sits at closed Hilton Honors auctions. Two companion data reads sit alongside this one: how where an auction runs shapes its price, and what the timing of winning bids reveals about how these auctions actually close.

Frequently asked questions

How many points auctions closed in the first half of 2026?

We tracked 2,180 loyalty-program auctions to a close between January 1 and June 30, 2026, across 12 programs. Of those, 2,175 closed with a price on record and 1,665 carry a verified winning bid rather than a last-observed number.

What was the typical winning bid?

Across all verified closes, the median winning bid was 82,500 points. That pooled figure leans heavily on Marriott, which made up 61% of closes, so the per-program medians (from 27,000 points for Accor up to 260,000 for Hilton) are the more useful guide.

What was the biggest points auction of H1 2026?

The largest verified close was a Hilton Honors McLaren F1 Team experience at the Canadian Grand Prix, which closed at 4,410,000 points. It is the single biggest verified result in our archive to date, and it took just two bids to get there.

Why do you separate "verified" from "last observed" prices?

Some programs, notably Delta and World of Hyatt, remove an auction the moment it ends, so we cannot confirm the true final. For those we report the last bid we saw while the auction was live, which is a floor, never a ceiling. We only call a number a "winning bid" when we verified it after close.

About this data

• Figures come from the PointAuctions.com `closed_auction_prices` archive, covering auctions with a close date from January 1 through June 30, 2026, and are frozen as verified through June 30, 2026. Auctions still flagged as coming-soon at close (teasers that never opened for bidding) are excluded from every count. The live per-program stats pages read higher over time as later closes and verifications land; those are current, this report is the H1 snapshot.

• Headline medians and the top-five list use verified closes only: a winning bid we confirmed after the auction ended. Delta SkyMiles and World of Hyatt take auctions offline at close, so their H1 prices are last-observed floors and are kept out of the verified medians and the uncontested ranking.

• A program is only headlined for a median at 10 or more verified closes. Alaska, IHG, and Emirates fall below that line and are shown as thin signals, not rates.

• Uncontested figures cover the 2,117 H1 closes that carry a numeric bid count. Category and program counts cover all 2,180 closes.

• All prices are actual points or miles bid, in each program's own currency. We do not convert points to dollar values.