Q4 2026 Freedom Flex 5% Categories: Grocery Stores, Dining & Red Cross Donations

This quarter’s lineup

For Q4 2026 (October 1 – December 31), the Chase Freedom Flex earns 5% back on three rotating categories, on up to $1,500 in combined purchases after activation:

• Grocery stores — supermarkets and smaller grocers; Walmart and Target are excluded
• Dining — sit-down, fast food, and delivery or takeout that codes as a restaurant
• American Red Cross donations — made through the official Red Cross channels

Everything else stays at the card’s regular rates: 5% on Chase Travel, 3% on drugstores, 1% elsewhere.

Dining is the headline: 7% on the Flex

The Freedom Flex already earns 3% on dining year-round. Chase does not replace that with the 5% bonus — it stacks. Chase’s own release spells it out: 1% base, plus 4% from the quarterly bonus, plus 2% from the standing dining offer, for 7% total on eligible dining this quarter.

That is the highest dining rate on any no-annual-fee card right now, and it covers the holiday season. The $1,500 cap still applies across all three categories combined, so $1,500 of dining alone is $105 back.

The original Chase Freedom (no longer open to new applicants) has no standing dining rate, so it earns the flat 5%.

What actually codes correctly

The perennial gotchas, from Chase’s fine print and cardholder reports we track:

• Walmart and Target are named exclusions, and wholesale clubs (Costco, Sam’s Club) and discount stores don’t count as grocery either. Real supermarkets, ethnic grocers, and smaller grocery stores do.
• Grocery delivery counts only if the merchant codes as a grocer. Instacart orders placed through the store’s own checkout usually keep the supermarket code; standalone delivery apps vary.
• Gas at a supermarket’s pump does not qualify, even when the grocer runs the station.
• Dining inside somewhere else — hotel restaurants charged to the room, stadium concessions, casino and theme-park food courts, grocery-store cafes — is excluded unless it’s classified as a separate restaurant merchant.
• Bakeries, caterers, and meal-kit services are not dining. Neither are restaurant gift cards.

Activate before December 14

Activation takes one tap in the Chase app or through MaxWorth’s offer activation flow. Purchases made from October 1 still qualify retroactively once you activate — but only if you activate by December 14, 2026. Miss that date and the whole quarter is gone.

Worth pairing with

If you redeem Ultimate Rewards through a Sapphire card, that 7% on dining becomes 7x points — worth ~10.5% toward travel at 1.5¢ per point, and 5x groceries becomes ~7.5%. A Freedom Flex + Sapphire Preferred pairing remains one of the highest-return two-card setups with a combined $95 in annual fees.

The other rotating cards this quarter

Discover and Citi run their own Q4 calendars, and they overlap on dining:

• Discover it — restaurants, entertainment, and utilities (electricity, gas, water, plus internet, cable and phone paid online or by phone). Same $1,500 quarterly cap, activation open through December 31.
• Citi Dividend — restaurants plus hotels, car rentals and attractions booked through Citi Travel (air is excluded). Citi’s cap is $6,000 per calendar year rather than per quarter, so this is the last window to use whatever’s left of 2026’s allowance.

If you hold a Freedom Flex alongside either one, put dining on the Flex: 7% beats 5%.