Star Alliance carrier Turkish Airlines has just started a promotion that strongly reminds us of SAS’ famous one-million-miles promo. If you visit six continents on Turkish Airlines flights between today and October 27, 2025, you will be rewarded with 1,000,000 award miles. This only works under certain conditions – the most important one is that you need to start or finish your trip to a continent in Istanbul. Fifth freedom flights are excluded from the promotion.
Turkish Airlines has decided to end the promotion early. If you’ve booked at least one ticket before July 8, then you’ll still be eligible to take part in the promotion and earn the million miles. Others, sadly, can no longer participate.
Besides the Istanbul-rule, there are other terms and conditions that make this challenge a bit harder than SAS’ request to travel with 15 different airlines. For example, already existing bookings do not count towards the promotion. You have to purchase and fly all tickets within the promotional period. Award tickets are excluded, as well.
Terms & Conditions
These are the main rules of the promotion. You can also find them here on Turkish Airlines’ website.
- Booking Period: June 27 until October 27, 2025
- Travel Period: June 27 until October 27, 2025
- Only flights from or via Istanbul International Airport (
IST) are eligible. 5th-Freedom-Flights likeGRU-EZEare excluded. - Origins and stops along the way do not count. E.g.
IST-SIN-MELonly counts as visiting Australia, not Asia. - Bookings made in the week prior to the promotion (June 20-26) are eligible if they are rebooked during the promotional period.
- The following tickets are ineligible:
- Award flights
- Select corporate rates
- Discounted tickets (e.g. student discounts)
- Tickets not booked on turkishairlines.com or authorized travel agencies
- Only flights operated by Turkish Airlines count.
- All flights in question need to be credited to the future millionaire’s Miles&Smiles account.
- Turkish domestic flights are excluded.
- The million will be credited in early November 2025.
Turkish Airlines has categorized all its destinations to continents in this table. You can use our map for visual aid:
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Miles&Smiles Redemption Options
Miles&Smiles members suffered from a notable devaluation last year. Redeeming miles for Turkish Airlines tickets came at twice the cost in some instances. Redemptions with Star Alliance partners got more expensive, too.
You can find Turkish Airlines’ current award chart here. When looking at the prices, you also need to consider that the airline demands high surcharges for both their own and partner flights.
Here are some examples of sensible redemptions of Miles&Smiles miles:
- Turkish Airlines:
- Upgrade Economy → Business from Istanbul to East Asia for 65,000 miles
- Upgrade Economy → Business from Europe to Istanbul for 25,000 miles
- Star Alliance:
- Worldwide domestic flights for 15,000 miles in Business Class (e.g. in North America)
- Business Class Europa → Middle East for 53,000 miles
- Business Class Europa → East & South East Asia for 90,000 miles
These are based on the June 2025 award chart. Please bear in mind that devaluations can happen any time.
Turkish Airlines’ website is infamously terrible when it comes to booking award flights with partner airlines. Be prepared for regular crashes and flights not being displayed despite being available. Booking via the airlines’ hotline is a time-consuming endeavour, as well.
Bottom Line
After SAS hit a home run with last year’s promotion, many airlines tried similar offers. Until now, Turkish Airlines is the only one that balances difficulty and reward (almost) as well its Scandinavian competition. The exclusions of fifth freedom flights, existing bookings and award tickets make it an expensive adventure, both in terms of time and money. Our first estimates are that you need to spend roughly €3,000 to complete the challenge. We will most likely post a matching run in the upcoming week.
Translated by Felix
Cover Picture: Photo by Kevin Hackert on Unsplash
Comments (9)
Tks for kind and usual help in itinerary that inspire my Sas Challenge completed at around 2500 eur and now eager for new one since really appreciate TK service as well free Istanbul tours or free hotels transit when allowed, I’m elite member with TK and plan challenge with all my family for whopping a 4 mio miles all going well, just wonder no problem if my wife and kids opening TK program right now before challenging starting since no reference in T&C for old or new member as supposing.
Kindly appreciate your kind comment aut suggestions.
Tks in advance for great info work and sweets promo:)
Best I could do is c.GBP 2500 or less (with opportunities to cheapen with points):
DUB (or ATH) -IST-CAI (GBP 275) – Africa
CAI-IST-KUL-SYD (GBP 480) – Australia
SYD-HAK-HKG (GBP 150 – Hainan Airlines)
HKG-IST-GRU (GBP 600) – South America
GRU-JFK (GBP 150 or 30k SAS EB + GBP 50 on DL)
NYC-IST-BOM-IST-NYC (GBP 450) – Asia, North America
NYC – Europe (GBP 300 or even less) – Europe
Although not sure if I personally will do it as that’s a lot of flying and TK M&S have let me down in the past.
I could find feasible 2-week itineraries for around 3500 USD, although including the Scoot flight to Athens to reposition from Australia. I am not sure if 1 million miles are worth the money and effort, as M&S is notoriously crashy and pass on surcharges, as highlighted in the post.
Can you give a possible plan that could cost only that much? I’m starting from Sofia, Bulgaria, so my first step is Melbourne. So far, so good – and it’s the cheapest way to get to Australia – even if I reposition to Istanbul to start from there (or anywhere else in Europe), the Turkish flight to Australia costs more. From there I take a flight to JFK, which is the cheapest to North America. South America is much more expensive, even Asia (like DXB) costs almost the same via Istanbul. From JFK I go back East to Asia (Dubai or Doha, which cost very similar, but Dubai gives much better options out). From there – South America – Bogota or Caracas are cheapest, but Bogota is a problem, because Colombia requires your in and out flights to be on the same ticket, and Turkish just won’t allow multi-city options at the moment. From there – Africa. Marrakech seems to be cheapest, and from there I need to get back to Europe. No good prices though, so I’m considering repositioning to Europe before getting that last leg to Sofia. And this is no less than 4500 eur (over 5000 usd). What am I missing? And by the way, a million miles for 3500 usd is great. The value of a Turkish mile is considered to be around 0.7c, and you will be getting it for half that. There are many things you can get with Turkish miles that will give you at least 7000 usd value. Not necessarily flying with Turkish Airlines, but with other Star Alliance partners.
I’m based in South America, so with a round trip you could do Europe and South America (~900EUR). Then Europe -> Cairo -> Sydney/Melbourne (Africa and Australia, 260 EUR + 600EUR). Reposition to Athens with Scoot flight (300 EUR, +100 EUR for checked luggage). Athens -> Dubai -> New York (Asia and North America, 250 EUR + 420 EUR). Plenty of cheap options to reposition to Europe from New York (300 EUR).
I think that it could not be optimal for people based in Europe. My main issue for going for this run is the visa for Australia. I see that AU has a 72h transit visa but I am not sure if that applies in that case, it is a single entry visa and should add 195 AUD to the budget.
I also found that round-trips could be more cost effective than one ways, so if you have more time to spare and is based in Europe, three round trips could do it. Europe -> South America (900 EUR), Asia -> North America (700 EUR), Africa -> Australia (1100 EUR). In Europe you can reposition to Dubai/Jeddah/Doha/Cairo/Tunis… (+300 EUR) and can spread out your trips across the four months, it should be much less exhausting.
No, it actually sounds quite good for Europe too. I think I can use some of this at least! Thank you for the ideas. 😉 However, about the spreading, I thought about it, but I don’t have much time without booked flights, so I was hoping I can do it in 12-14 days max. 😉 BTW, the Australian visa was free last time I went there (2014). Will check if this 72 hour transit works for me…
I’d be really surprised if I can find a set of flights for less than 4000-4500 eur. Trying to squeeze it down to 3500, but no luck – even when using some positioning flights with other airlines to avoid some too expensive legs. For example, JFK-DXB is around 680 eur, and I can find flights to several cities in Europe for 200-250 eur, or even to Dubai with Qatar Airways for around 400 eur, but in the first case Turkish flights from these European cities to Dubai cost almost as their flight from New York, and by adding 200-250 I only go up from the Turkish route directly from JFK, and the cheaper Qatar Airways flight to Dubai doesn’t help at all because well, it’s not Turkish. If I can really find a 3000 eur solution, I think the challenge is worth the effort. But at 4000-4500… no, thank you. Especially with this so short expiration date of the million miles.
Hi! i may be wrong, but my understanding is that flights TO Istanbul does not count. So an open jaw IST-NYC and back from BOG-ISTwould only count as North America.
Hi Jan! We do interpret it in the same way.