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Get 1,000 Virgin Points with your first Virgin Trains Ticketing booking

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If you’ve not tried Virgin Trains Ticketing yet, the new rail booking app, there is a generous incentive available.

You will receive 1,000 Virgin Points with your first booking of £5+.

1,000 Virgin Points are worth £5 off a future Virgin Trains Ticketing booking (which confusingly is how the offer is promoted) or can be used towards reward flights or any other Virgin Red redemption.

Get 1,000 Virgin Points with your first booking at Virgin Trains Ticketing

This is how the deal works:

  • download the Virgin Trains Ticketing app
  • register or sign-in using your Virgin Red account details (you will need to install the Virgin Red app if you haven’t already, and link it to your Virgin Flying Club account)
  • make your first purchase (this offer is strictly for new Virgin Trains Ticketing customers) for £5+ with Virgin Trains Ticketing
  • receive a promo code during the checkout process for 1,000 Virgin Points which must be redeemed in the Virgin Red app within 30 days

You can, as Virgin Red suggests, use these 1,000 points for £5 off your next train ticket, but in reality you are free to use them as you wish.

You will also receive your standard 3 Virgin Points per £1 spent at Virgin Trains Ticketing.

The offer will expire either:

  • on 31st December 2023 or
  • whenever 5,000 promo codes have been allocated

I’m not sure how you’re meant to know when the latter has taken place, but I suspect that Virgin Red is confident that it won’t exceed the target by the end of the year.

It’s worth noting that the Virgin Trains Ticketing app offers split ticketing, allowing you make additional savings if two separate tickets – instead of one direct ticket – would be cheaper. London Paddington to Bath Spa, for example, could be cheaper if booked as London Paddington to Reading and Reading to Bath Spa. The app will identify such anomalies automatically.

If you have a Virgin Atlantic credit card, you may also have a decent cashback offer for Virgin Trains Ticketing in your app.

I have an offer for 8% cashback, which would stack with the 1,000 points offer.

You can find out more about this offer in the Virgin Red app.

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How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards

How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (April 2025)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

You can choose from two official Virgin Atlantic credit cards (apply here, the Reward+ card has a bonus of 18,000 Virgin Points and the free card has a bonus of 3,000 Virgin Points):

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

3,000 bonus points, no fee and 1 point for every £1 you spend Read our full review

You can also earn Virgin Points from various American Express cards – and these have sign-up bonuses too.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for a year and comes with 20,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 20,000 Virgin Points.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on the ‘free for a year’ American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card is increased from 20,000 Membership Rewards points to 30,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (30,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 50,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 50,000 Virgin Points.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on American Express Platinum is increased from 50,000 Membership Rewards points to a huge 80,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (80,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Small business owners should consider the two American Express Business cards. Points convert at 1:1 into Virgin Points.

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Virgin Points. 

Category

Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club

Comments (26)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • BJ says:
    10 Nov10 November 06:08

    There is no mention of this offer on my Virgin Red app. Nothing on Virgin Trains either.

  • Charlie says:
    10 Nov10 November 06:42

    I have a 12% cash bank offer on my Credit Card app (Virgin flying club credit card).

  • Martin says:
    10 Nov10 November 07:10

    My Virgon Red app says if you buy a £5 train ticket you get a promo code during checkout for 1,000 points (worth £5) to use towards your next ticket.

  • Greenpen says:
    10 Nov10 November 07:18

    Just how many apps and clubs do Virgin have? Flying Club, Red, Ticketing………. I’m just a bit confused by their points system. As a point collector I think I may or may not be signed up to these, or not!

    Whoever invented the original Tesco ClubCard scheme with its oddities must have moved on to Virgin.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:
    10 Nov10 November 07:39

    The ticketing one is purely for trains and given the complexities of train tickets probably a wise decision to keep it stand alone.

    It uses your V Red log on so it’s not another password to remember and it needs that link in order to use your points to pay for trains and for them to deposit the points if you use cash,

    If you have a flying club account then you also should have a Red account if you want to spend miles on anything not flight related.

  • SammyJ says:
    10 Nov10 November 10:22

    I assume I can buy any tickets on the Virgin app for this, not just Virgin trains? So they’ll sell me a ticket on LNER and that still qualifies for the bonus?

    • Alex says:
      10 Nov10 November 10:23

      Sadly virgin trains are no more. So they can ONLY sell you trains operated by others.

      • Rob says:
        10 Nov10 November 11:04

        The Virgin Red app is refreshing funny when discussing this:

        “Not travelling with Virgin Trains? Don’t worry, no one is. Virgin hasn’t operated trains since 2019. With Virgin Trains Ticketing, you can buy train tickets to and from anywhere across Great Britain and earn three Virgin Points per £1 on every journey. You can then use those points to unlock discounts on future train travel. Win-win.”

  • PeterK says:
    10 Nov10 November 12:10

    Just bought a £5.05 day return ticket for this afternoon using the Virgin ticketing App. The 1,000 bonus miles are already in my VIrgin Atlantic account. Plus a further 12% cash back using my Virgin credit card and 16 Virgin miles pending from the ticket purchase transaction. Great to see admin fees no longer apply.

    Unlike many other train apps I could get an e ticket for ‘on the day’ travel. Will certainly use the app more in the future now I know admin fees have been removed.

    • John says:
      10 Nov10 November 12:51

      You should always be able to get an e ticket for immediate travel, some flows do not allow e tickets at all but the day of travel should not affect that

    • Matt B says:
      10 Nov10 November 20:15

      What route?

      • MD says:
        11 Nov11 November 12:55

        I second this request. I never use the rail network and would appreciate any suggested route that isn’t eye wateringly expensive, can’t find any single under £16! TYIA.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:
    10 Nov10 November 13:09

    For me the best is 5% via airtime and 5% via MBNA.

    I buy LNER vouchers and then use those for tickets. Then I’m not always reliant on those two offers running at the same time and it also means any minimum spend is usually exceeded.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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