Emirates Skywards ICICI Bank Emeralde
KeepUnlimited lounges and free Emirates status — if you actually fly the jet.
a year at ₹40,000 a month, after the fee
Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for
What it's worth to you, after the fee
Welcome: 10,000 Skywards Miles + Emirates Skywards Silver tier — recurs on every renewal; Gold from year two at ₹15L spend (incl. ₹50k on Emirates bookings)
Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied: it earns nothing on utilities and fuel here, so that spend is dropped, not paid at the headline, and stops pacing milestones and the waiver. Plus milestones, minus the fee. No accelerator credit — the ranking model on /compare adds ~20% of spend at the card's best accelerator, so its ₹ for this card reads higher.
How these numbers are computed — and why the rankings show a bigger one →
Spend tiers, milestones and fee waivers included, at our house ₹/point. Portal and category multipliers can push higher — run your exact number →
Pays for itself at ₹6,000 a month
At ₹6,000 a month — ₹72,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹10,100 gross (earn ₹1,100 + milestones ₹9,000) against its ₹10,000 fee = ₹100 net — the first rung at or above ₹0. The ladder runs in ₹1,000 steps to ₹1,00,000 a month and ₹10,000 steps to ₹5,00,000; figures are rounded to the hundred, and the accelerator is never credited.
2 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants
Our #1 for Movies; #3 for Status & memberships — 2 of the 23 questions this desk ranks.
Fee, justified: before you earn a single point, this card bundles ~₹2,000/yr of memberships + elite status you'd actually use — weigh that against the ₹10,000 annual fee. Rewards and milestones stack on top (run your spend → · every card's perks, ranked →).
The take
This is the only card that drops Emirates Skywards miles straight into your account with no transfer step — 2 miles per ₹100, which is 1.8% at our ₹0.90 mark (already haircut for the carrier surcharges ex-India Skywards awards carry). The real pull is the perk stack: 10,000 Skywards Miles on joining and again on every renewal — ₹9,000 that nearly refunds the ₹10,000 fee before you spend a rupee — unlimited domestic and international lounge access via Priority Pass, Silver tier from day one and Gold from year two once you cross ₹15L. The asterisks are loud: no fee waiver at any spend, 3.5% forex, a single drifting-dynamic airline with no exit, and fuel/insurance/utilities/rent/wallets that earn zero. Fly Emirates and value unlimited lounges and it's a genuine keep; do neither and the miles are wallpaper.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
Here is the fee, the spend that clears it, and everything that has moved under this card since you last decided.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹10,000/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹10,000/yr
Break-even ₹6,000 a month — ₹72,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
₹3,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹8,100 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹17,100 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹53,400 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹89,700 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend
Everyday earn plus milestones, minus the fee — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
Your copy of this card
You hold this card.
Kept on this device, in your browser. It is never sent to us, never synced, and nothing else on the site reads it yet.
The downgrade
ICICI Bank publishes no document naming a card you can step down to, so we name none — an invented product change is a phone call you would waste. That leaves keep or cancel, and the numbers above are the whole of it.
What has changed under this card
- 10 Sep 2026 ICICI's September lounge list drops four doors and adds Bhogapuram issuer-wide
- 29 Aug 2026 ICICI un-reserves Mumbai's Adani Silver lounge — the whole Annexure-1 board gets in issuer-wide
- 25 Aug 2026 Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles opens a broad SkyTeam status match — up to Elite Plus a program these points reach
We price what is in force today — a change that has not happened yet is not in these numbers. the full archive for this card →
If you call to cancel
What the bank offers to keep you is the one fact this desk cannot compute. We are collecting those reports — dated, and only in aggregate — before publishing any: an offer one reader was made is not one you are owed. Called about this card? Tell us what they offered →
The desk publishes subscribable .ics feeds for the dates it knows — offer deadlines, devaluations, expiry audits. Your renewal date is not one of them: only your statement knows it.
What's good
- 2 Skywards Miles/₹100 straight into Emirates — no transfer step
- 10,000 Skywards Miles on joining and every renewal (₹9,000) — nearly refunds the fee
- Unlimited domestic + international lounge access via Priority Pass
- Emirates Silver tier on day one; Gold from year two at ₹15L spend (₹50k of it on Emirates)
- BookMyShow buy-one-get-one, up to ₹750 off the second ticket, four times a month — behind ₹25,000 of spend in the preceding quarter
Watch out
- No annual-fee waiver at any spend; 3.5% forex markup
- Single-airline currency — Skywards or nothing, and it keeps drifting dynamic
- Insurance, utilities, government and education earn zero since 15 Jan 2026 — as do fuel, rent, cash and wallet loads
- The earn rate itself was cut from 2.5 to 2 miles per ₹100 on 15 Jan 2026
- The ₹15L Gold-tier test counts retail purchases only — EMI, balance transfers, PLCC, cash advances, fees and interest are out, and so are rent, government and education payments
- Ex-India Skywards awards carry heavy carrier surcharges — the ₹0.90 mark is the haircut
What these points actually fly
Emirates Skywards move to Marriott Bonvoy — and that programme prices every award dynamically. There is no published chart to quote, so we quote nothing: an estimate is not a seat.
what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →
What earns, what doesn't
13 sourced rules · 8 pay zero
Earns Skywards Miles directly, not ICICI RP. No-earn is fuel, insurance, utilities, government, education and cash; ICICI's 5-Feb-2024 bank-wide exclusions add rent (6513/7349) and wallet loads. EMI, balance transfers and PLCC are NOT no-earn — the card page's FAQ scopes that list to "milestone calculations" and the MITC to "total spends calculation (for Annual Fee Waiver and Milestone Benefits)" (corrected 2026-08-01).
- Fuel · excluded Zero miles; 1% surcharge waiver on ₹400–₹4,000 fuel txns
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero miles (ICICI-wide 6513/7349, 5-Feb-2024); 1% rent fee applies
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero miles; ICICI-wide wallet-load exclusion (5-Feb-2024)
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · excluded Zero miles (official card-page exclusion list)
Does your spend count toward the milestones?
not published — and we say which
A different question from the one above — earning points and counting toward a threshold are separate rules, and issuers write them separately.
Not published. ICICI Bank states what the Emirates Skywards ICICI Bank Emeralde earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the milestones . We won't guess it from the earn table or from a sibling card: Axis published three cards' rules on one day and all three lists differed. If you hold this card and have it in writing from the issuer, send us the document and we'll source it.
Lounge access
735 of 793 tracked doors
Opens 735 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 294 airports , via Priority Pass India, Priority Pass Global — see the full map →
Can you get it?
the route in — no cutoffs published
The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.
Direct application — no invite list, no banking relationship required.
ICICI Bank publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.
per the official ICICI Bank MITC — figures marked (community) aren't in the PDF; the issuer won't say · filter the board by what you can get →
The fine print
7 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Joining and annual fee ₹10,000, NO spend waiver — the recurring 10,000 Skywards Miles are the de-facto rebate. Full 3.5% forex, no premium concession. ICICI publishes no income/age criteria in the MITC — not published.
per the official ICICI Bank MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
8 dated changes
Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to. Every one is dated here; the tracker carries each one's before → after and the write-up.
- 10 Sept 2026ICICI's September lounge list drops four doors and adds BhogapuramThe prior edition opened Bhubaneswar's landside Bird Lounge, Vadodara's Premium Lounge, Visakhapatnam's Airr Lounge and Bar, and Dehradun's landside Bird Lounge, and filed Ahmedabad T2 international as The Lounge opposite Gate 3 → Those four rooms are gone. Bhubaneswar keeps O'Vetra near Gate 8, Dehradun keeps Carnations in the security hold, Vadodara is off the list, and Visakhapatnam's rows are Encalm domestic and international at Bhogapuram. Ahmedabad T2 international is Adani Silver Lounge - International, Gate 08, and it is not asterisked
ICICI re-saved its consolidated domestic lounge list on 10 September 2026 and moved rooms, not quotas. Four doors an Annexure-1 card used to open are off the list: Bhubaneswar's landside Bird Lounge (O'Vetra, airside near Gate 8, stays), Vadodara entirely, Visakhapatnam's Airr Lounge and Bar, and Dehradun's landside Bird Lounge (Carnations, in the security hold, stays). Visakhapatnam's replacement is two Encalm rooms at Bhogapuram, which this map does not carry yet — the airport is not in our coordinate file, so those doors are recorded here and not drawn. Ahmedabad's T2 international row is no longer The Lounge opposite Gate 3. It is Adani Silver Lounge - International, first floor, Gate 08, and the row has no asterisk, so the whole Annexure-1 board gets it at each card's own quarterly quota rather than the three unlimited cards alone. Noida's three Jewar rows are still on the PDF and still unmapped.
- 29 Aug 2026ICICI un-reserves Mumbai's Adani Silver lounge — the whole Annexure-1 board gets in
- 25 Aug 2026Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles opens a broad SkyTeam status match — up to Elite Plus
- 29 Jul 2026Times Black publishes its eligibility bar and swaps BLADE for Thumby Aviation
- 15 Jul 2026Your World Rewards pays 5,000 Bonvoy points for one paid stay
- 1 Jul 2026ICICI's lounge-gate exemption expires for Adani One and MakeMyTripAdani One ICICI Signature, Adani One ICICI Platinum and the MakeMyTrip ICICI Bank Credit Card were exempt from the ₹75,000-per-quarter spend gate on complimentary domestic lounge access — "valid till Jun 30, 2026" → All three now "require spends of ₹ 75,000 to be made in a calendar quarter to unlock airport lounge access in the next calendar quarter, with effect from Jul 01, 2026"
ICICI's MITC, headed "Last updated on Aug 2nd, 2026", carries the expiry date inside the exemption list itself and then restates it as a dated instruction below. No lounge visit is removed — MakeMyTrip keeps 2 domestic a quarter plus 1 international, Adani One Signature 4 a quarter plus 2 Priority Pass, Adani One Platinum 2 a quarter — but all of them now cost ₹3 lakh of routed annual spend on top of the fee, which reprices the ₹750 Adani One Platinum hardest. The ₹75,000 excludes rent, government, education, EMI, fees, interest, DCC and reversals, and the qualifying quarter is offset (26th to 25th), so the spend that unlocks Oct-Dec was made between 26 June and 25 September. Worth flagging for the desk: ICICI's own "Upcoming changes to Credit Card features and charges" page, re-read 28 August 2026, still lists MakeMyTrip among the exempt cards with no expiry, and never names the Adani One pair at all. Two live ICICI documents, two different answers; the MITC is the regulated one and the more recently dated, so it is the one we follow.
- 25 Jun 2026Aeroplan re-cut the partner column of its Flight Reward Chart — India to Asia business up 25%
- 1 Feb 2026ICICI gates its BookMyShow movie perk behind quarterly spend
Every ICICI Bank change we've dated → 10 events since 2019, 7 of them nerfs — worst year 2026.
Verified against ICICI Bank's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 4 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — 2 Skywards Miles per ₹100 on domestic and international spend, "Get 10,000 Skywards Miles and Emirates Skywards Silver Tier Membership" on joining
- official MITC (last updated 2 Aug 2026) — dates the cut: "2 Skyward Miles will be earned per ₹ 100 spent instead of 2.5 Miles" from 15 Jan 2026
- official Emirates partner page
- official Launch press release (Visa network partner)