Chase Freedom Q4 2026 Categories: 5% on Groceries and Dining

What earns 5% from October 1 to December 31

Three categories qualify this quarter, and they share a single spending cap.

Anything you spend beyond $1,500 in combined category purchases reverts to the card's ordinary earning rate. On the original Chase Freedom that is 1%. On the Chase Freedom Flex it is 1% outside the card's permanent bonus categories.

Activate before December 14, 2026

Registration opened on September 15, 2026 and closes on December 14, 2026. Chase does not apply the bonus retroactively to purchases you make before you activate, which is the single most common way cardholders lose this money.

Activation is free and takes one click. You can do it in the Chase mobile app, on chase.com, or through the quarterly email Chase sends cardholders. Activating once covers the whole quarter, so there is no reason to wait.

What the 5% is actually worth

Filling the cap returns $75 in a quarter, or $1,500 multiplied by 5%. Measured against the 1% you would otherwise earn on the same spending, the categories are worth $60 in incremental rewards. Across a full year of quarterly categories, that is up to $300 in extra cash back on a card with no annual fee.

The number gets better if you hold a premium Chase card. Cash back earned on a Freedom card is really Ultimate Rewards points at 100 points per dollar, and those points can be moved to a Chase Sapphire Preferred, a Sapphire Reserve, or an Ink card. Once they sit there, they transfer 1:1 to Chase Ultimate Rewards airline and hotel partners. That converts $75 of cash back into 7,500 transferable points, which are worth meaningfully more than $75 when redeemed for premium cabin awards. Run your own numbers with our points calculator before you decide how to redeem.

Groceries: watch the exclusions

Chase excludes Walmart and Target from the grocery category. That exclusion catches people out every quarter, because both retailers sell groceries and many shoppers treat them as supermarkets. Warehouse clubs are generally excluded as well.

The category keys off the merchant category code assigned to the store, not off what ends up in your basket. A supermarket counter inside a superstore normally codes as a superstore, so the purchase earns 1%. If you are unsure about a specific merchant, make a small test purchase early in the quarter and check how it posts before you route serious spending there.

Dining pays more on the Freedom Flex

Dining is already a permanent 3% category on the Chase Freedom Flex. The quarterly 5% bonus stacks on the card's base earning rather than replacing it, so restaurant spending in Q4 earns more on the Flex than on the older Chase Freedom, which is no longer open to new applicants.

That distinction matters when you decide which card to carry to dinner. If you hold both, the Flex is the better choice for restaurants once the quarterly cap is in play, and it stays the better choice on dining for the rest of the year.

American Red Cross donations

Direct donations to the American Red Cross count toward the 5% this quarter, which is unusual for a rotating category. Chase has paired a charitable category with Q4 before, and the logic is the same each time: year-end giving peaks in December.

If a charitable gift was already in your plans, routing it through a Freedom card during the quarter earns 5% on money you were going to give regardless. The donation has to go to the American Red Cross directly rather than through a third-party donation platform, which may code as something else entirely.

How to fit this around a Chase application

If you are also thinking about opening a new Chase card this quarter, check where you stand against the Chase 5/24 rule first. Chase will generally decline your application if you have opened five or more personal credit cards across all issuers in the past 24 months, and the Freedom Flex is subject to that restriction. Our roundup of the best Chase credit cards covers which products are worth an application slot.

Bottom Line

Activate the categories today rather than in December, then push groceries and restaurant spending onto the Freedom or Freedom Flex until you reach $1,500 in combined purchases. Keep Walmart, Target, and warehouse club runs on a different card, because they will not earn the bonus. If you also hold a Sapphire or Ink card, move the rewards over before redeeming so you can transfer them to travel partners instead of taking the cash.