Club Royale points reset on April 1, but your status keeps its own clock
Do Club Royale points expire?
Yes and no, and you need both halves. Your program-year point total goes back to zero on April 1, every year, however close you were to the next tier. The tier status those points earned runs on its own clock after that reset, so your card doesn't go blank on April 1 along with the points.
Ask the question on Cruise Critic or r/royalcaribbean and you'll usually get both answers in the same thread. One person says points reset every April. Another says their Signature lasted another year. They're both right. They're talking about different numbers.
The Club Royale program year runs April 1 to March 31. Remember that date, because every answer below depends on it.
Two balances, two clocks
Call it the two-clock problem. Every Club Royale player carries two point numbers at once, and each one runs on a different calendar.
The first is your program-year total: every point from every sailing between April 1 and March 31, added up. That number decides your tier. It's also the one that drops to zero on April 1.
The second is what you earn on a single sailing. RC's instant rewards chart reads that number to decide whether you leave that cruise with a certificate. It starts and ends with the voyage Club Royale Reward Points expire at the end of each sailing and are not carried over if not redeemed. (source).
Then there's status. It isn't a balance at all. It's what the first number bought you, and it gets its own expiry date, one that outlasts the points that earned it.
Why a one-word answer costs players money
Both of the usual one-word replies are true about one number and wrong about the others.
"They don't expire" is the more expensive mistake. A player who believes it books an April sailing to finish off a tier, then logs in to find the year-to-date total back at zero and the full distance to Signature in front of them again.
"Everything resets" costs money too, in a different way. It sends people into March playing hard to protect a tier they've already locked in for the coming year. That's coin-in spent on a problem they don't have.
So when someone asks whether points expire, ask them back: which points?
Can I lose my Club Royale status?
The April reset won't take it. Earned status keeps running after the point total clears, which is how a player can sit at zero points on April 2 and still hold a Signature card. Club Royale tier status is renewed annually on a 12-month Program Year cycle beginning April 1st, so earned status lasts until the next April 1st evaluation. (source).
Time is what takes it. When the retention window closes, your tier falls back to whatever your most recent program year earned. In practice, the way to lose Signature is a quiet year: you keep the card, you don't re-qualify, and the next window starts from the lower number.
The evaluation point is the April 1st date, so that is where I'd look for the change. A light summer isn't what the cycle is built around. The card question gets answered when the window closes, and what matters then is whether there's a new qualifying total behind it.
What does 30,000 points get you?
That depends on which 30,000 you mean.
Earned across a program year, 30,000 points clears the 25,000 Signature line with room to spare, and that tier is yours for the retention window above. Earned on one sailing, 30,000 is a per-cruise number, and what it pays is whatever RC's instant rewards chart lists for that band. Check the chart for the current prize before you plan around it.
The number is the same and the prizes are different. If all 30,000 came from one big sailing, you get both: that cruise's certificate, plus a year-to-date total that put you over Signature. Most people who post this question mean one of the two and get an answer about the other.
Should you push for Signature before March 31?
One r/royalcaribbean thread asks the exact question: 18,000 points on the program year, Signature at 25,000, March 31 getting close. That's a gap of 7,000 points.
Start with what's already safe. Those 18,000 points have done their job. They've earned the tier 18,000 qualifies for, and April 1 can't undo that.
The only thing at risk is the 7,000-point distance to Signature. On April 1 that distance goes back to 25,000.
So it's a narrow decision. If you already have a sailing booked before March 31, and the play you'd put in on it closes 7,000 anyway, play it and let the year end on its own. If closing the gap means booking a cruise you weren't planning, or playing harder than you would on any other trip, our advice is to let it go. The coin-in behind 7,000 points is real money, and Signature has to earn that back through offers you'd actually use. Push only when the sailing is already on the calendar and you were going to play that much anyway.
Whichever way you go, that sailing's points still count toward its own instant certificate. March 31 has nothing to do with that.
Where the points turn into offers
Check your points and status in your Club Royale account. That's where RC keeps them. SailQuery starts at the other end, with the offers that play produces.
Log in, scan, sync, and every Club Royale offer on your account shows up on one dashboard. After a big sailing or a tier change, you can see exactly what arrived without digging through email, screenshots or mailers. Syncing happens in the app on iPhone, iPad or an Apple-silicon Mac, and you can open the synced dashboard in any browser.
That covers both sides of the two-clock problem. RC's account shows where your numbers stand, and SailQuery shows what they've earned you so far.