The “new kind of member” Costco is talking about is not a new card. It is an age group. More than a quarter of the warehouse club’s members are now under 40, executives told investors on September 24, 2026, and the number of under-40 members has grown by nearly 60% since the pandemic. Fees and tiers are unchanged: Gold Star and Executive remain the two personal options in the US, Canada and the UK.
Chief executive Ron Vachris put the business case in one line on the fourth-quarter earnings call: “While these younger members start out spending a little less with us, over time, they grow into higher spending members.” Chief financial officer Gary Millerchip called the shift, with “over a quarter now of all members being under 40,” a positive sign for future spending per member.
The numbers behind the claim
Costco ended its fiscal year on August 30 with 84.1 million paid memberships, up 3.8%, and 150.4 million cardholders once household and add-on cards are counted. Executive memberships, the pricier tier, reached 42.3 million, up 9.4%, which is now just over half of all paid memberships. Renewal rates were 92.3% in the US and Canada and 89.8% worldwide.
The fees are a large business in their own right. According to the results Costco filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, membership fees brought in $5.907 billion in the fiscal year on net sales of $297.2 billion. That line was $5.323 billion a year earlier, so every renewing member adds to a figure that grew by roughly $584 million in twelve months.
Much of the youth push runs through phones rather than aisles. Costco said its Uber Eats partnership is expanding from 17 states to the whole US, alongside DoorDash and its longer-running Instacart arrangement in the US and Canada, and that members ordering through those apps are significantly younger than its base overall. Digitally enabled sales, which include third-party delivery, passed $33 billion for the year.
What membership costs in each country
Costco runs 647 warehouses in the US and Puerto Rico, 115 in Canada and 29 in the UK. Current prices on its national websites:
- US: Gold Star $65 a year, Executive $130, both plus applicable sales tax. Executive earns a 2% annual reward capped at $1,250.
- Canada: Gold Star C$65 and Executive C$130, plus applicable sales tax.
- UK: Gold Star £42 (£35 before VAT) and Executive Gold Star £84 (£70 before VAT), with the Executive reward capped at £500 a year.
The UK differs in one practical way. Its standard Gold Star card is restricted to current or retired workers from approved employment groups and professions, and anyone who does not qualify can buy an online-only membership for the same £42. US and Canadian shoppers face no such test.
The Executive upgrade, worked out
The 2% reward has to cover the extra fee before it pays anything back, so the break-even point is simple division. In the US the upgrade costs $65 more ($130 minus $65), and $65 divided by 0.02 is $3,250 of eligible spending a year, about $271 a month. Canada works the same way in Canadian dollars: C$3,250 a year. In the UK the gap is £42 (£84 minus £42), so the break-even is £2,100 a year, or £175 a month. The caps set the ceiling: the US reward stops growing at $62,500 of annual spending, and the UK one at £25,000.
One common mistake is comparing the sticker prices across borders as if they were like for like. The UK figures already include 20% VAT, while US and Canadian prices are quoted before sales tax, which varies by state and province. Strip the VAT out and the UK Gold Star fee is £35.
What the company is betting on
New members have their price too. The US site currently offers new members who set up auto-renewal a $20 digital shop card with Gold Star or $40 with Executive, an offer limited to people who have not held a membership in the past 18 months.
The younger cohort does not reverse a slowdown on its own. Analysts on the call pointed out that membership growth has eased for eight straight quarters, and Millerchip said the recent pace is probably more typical of what the company expects as younger, digitally recruited members settle into normal renewal patterns.
The bigger lever is more buildings. Costco plans 33 openings in fiscal 2027, five of them relocations, including five in Canada and four in Europe, with new US markets in Buffalo, New York and Lawrence, Kansas.
Further reading
Image: Aaron F. Stone, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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