Postcrossing Blog

Submissions for The Graceful Envelope Contest are open for 2026! If you’re interested, don’t forget to check out the rules for this year even if you’ve participated in the past, as it looks like there have been some changes from previous years. This year’s theme is “great beginnings”, so sounds like a great year to start joining in, too!

In honour of the event, we wanted to highlight some of the beautiful envelopes from last year’s contest that caught our eye. The theme was “go fourth”:

There are links to all the winners and honorable mentions on the 2025 contest page.

As I mentioned above, this year’s theme is “great beginnings”, celebrating historic events which marked the start of something new. Although it’s about beautiful envelopes, everyone can participate: the judgement is based on the overall effect and the interpretation of the theme, including the way you incorporate the postage stamps you use. There are different categories for different age groups, so kids are encouraged to participate and their work is judged on its own merit, not in comparison to adult calligraphers and artists.

Anyone can participate by mailing in an envelope (inside a cover envelope) by March 31, 2026. This is the postmark deadline, so you should be OK as long as it’s mailed by that date, but make sure it gets stamped with the postmark if you’re cutting it close! You can check out all the rules on the Graceful Envelope Contest website.

Good luck!

Every year, the “Cards for Literacy” initiative leaves us with that warm fuzzy feeling that comes from seeing postcards do what they do best: connect people… and, at the same time, help support something bigger!

This time, the yearly partnership we run with Deutsche Post was slightly different from previous years. Instead of counting each card towards a final donation amount, Deutsche Post put a cap on the donation of €10,000 right from the start (as we announced back in November). Even though the donation wasn’t tied to a per-card total this year, the number of postcards sent still matters to us: it shows the enthusiasm behind the project, and it’s a lovely snapshot of how many people chose to take part — whether by sending one postcard or a whole stack.

With all that said, over the course of the campaign, postcrossers in Germany sent 111,561 postcards, which is brilliant! 🥳

This donation will support Stiftung Lesen, a German foundation that works to strengthen reading skills and foster a love of books from an early age. Through projects with families, schools, libraries, and volunteers, they help create more opportunities for children to discover stories, and to grow up with reading as a natural part of everyday life.

Deutsche Post is also giving away three adorable paper postboxes to postcrossers in Germany who took part. As always, Paulo will run his magical script to randomly pick the winners from everyone who sent at least one postcard during this initiative. We’ll contact the winners by email soon, so if you’re in Germany and sent a postcard last December, keep an eye on your inbox… you might be one of them! 😊

So, on behalf of the whole team: thank you to everyone who joined in, shared the campaign, and helped keep the momentum of this initiative. And a big thank you to Deutsche Post for supporting Stiftung Lesen and making the €10,000 donation possible.

Here’s to more happy mail and good causes in 2026!

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

How much do you know about the history of your own country? There are things that every schoolchild seems to be taught, for every country: in the UK, I think everyone is taught that 1066 was the year of the Battle of Hastings, for instance. But we don’t always learn the little things, the quirky facts, the odd corners of a country’s history. So this month’s writing prompt is a chance to share what you know!

In Wales, between 1839 and 1843, there was a series of protests collectively referred to as the “Rebecca Riots”, which resonated throughout Britain (the illustration I found and included here is apparently from the Illustrated London News, as late as 1855!). The protests were directed at toll-gates, during a time of low prices for farming products coming right after a famine. To pass the toll-gates to take goods to market to sell, the farmers had to pay high fees, which weren’t adjusted according to the hardship people were experiencing.

In response, farmers dressed as women, calling themselves “Rebecca’s daughters”, and marched to the toll-gates. At the gate, one of the group would act as “Rebecca” and lead a sort of mini-play ending with the “daughters” forcing the gate open to let Rebecca pass (and usually trying to destroy it so it couldn’t be immediately closed again).

The Rebecca riots occurred in a really serious context, of course… but it’s still rather cool to picture these burly farmers dressing up in women’s clothing as a way to protest and destroy the toll-gates. In writing this post, I learned that it was likely linked to methods of community justice called Ceffyl Pren; apparently getting dressed up in women’s clothing in order to hide their identities was a key part of how communities regulated themselves and called out bad behaviour. I don’t know how much it would’ve really helped to hide people though. I feel like I’d still know my neighbour even if he wore a dress!

Is there anything quirky you know about your own history? Some little-known fact, or something everyone in your country learns about in school? Let us know! You can write about it in the comments here, as always, or use it as a prompt for something to write on your postcards this month!

When I saw Helen Baggott’s Posted in the Past recommended, I knew I had to give this one a shot and write a review for the blog. It took me a while to get round to it, but here we are at last!

Posted in the Past promises to “reveal the true stories written on a postcard”, and it turns out that this is mostly through tracing the people who wrote or received the postcard, and working out their genealogy. That means we get some hints about their lives, including their occupations and ages, but the author doesn’t really dig into the circumstances mentioned on the postcards, which sometimes seem pretty tantalising.

It makes sense that the focus is on just identifying who the people are, and tracing their families and potential descendants, because that’s a lot easier to research (comparatively speaking!) from census records and similar than trying to figure out what someone might’ve meant by a cryptic message on a postcard. With so little space, people don’t go in for a lot of filler, and often postcards are just a way to say hi from a distant place.

Still, genealogy isn’t really an interest of mine, so I wasn’t as hooked on this as I’d hoped to be. The idea of finding someone’s old postcard in a shop and figuring out who they were seems attractive, but when it’s done this way it gets pretty repetitive, and it’s hard to feel a sense of getting to know people from the kind of sparse details you get from census records and parish records.

That said, this probably is one that people interested in genealogy would appreciate, and I learned something about the whole process, so I did enjoy that aspect! And I especially enjoyed when Baggott found links between different postcards, showing they were sent by people who knew each other (even when found separately).

Not a winner for me, but maybe for you! On to pastures new for me—I have a couple of books lined up to read sometime soon that discuss the post or aspects of the mail, but I’m always looking for recommendations for books themed around mail, postcards and postal services. You can drop them in this forum thread to make sure I see them! (You may need to browse a bit on the forum first, to open up this section, but that shouldn’t take long.)

Rebecca (zincirli) from Toronto (Canada) has been a member of Postcrossing for a while, and when we heard about her hobby of collecting pictorial cancellation marks, we thought that sounded cool and like a great topic for our blog! So without any further ado, here’s our latest spotlight, so that she can tell us about it in her own words!

How did you get started sending postcards? What is your earliest memory of them?

I’ve always enjoyed getting mail, but I didn’t really get into sending a postcards frequently until I started traveling in my early 20s.

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

One of my former bosses actually heard about Postcrossing on a podcast, thought of me and shared the website, and I signed up immediately! I’ve been obsessed ever since. I think what really got me hooked was I’d say the artform of Postcrossing. Finding the right postcard, choosing stamps, decorating it to match (if possible) what people’s interests are, it’s such a great creative outlet.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies or collections? Tell us about pictorial cancellations!

I love to collect stickers and washi tape, and I have quite a few house plants too! But what I’m really into collecting right now is pictorial cancels. I saw them on the Canada Post website in early 2024 and had been curious. I then noticed this post on the forum, and went to visit Toronto’s First Post Office to get their pictorial cancel in person! The staff were so wonderful it inspired me to mail my first cancel requests, and I’ve been hooked ever since. If there’s a pictorial cancel that I think someone in my life would like I’ll also get a postcard sent to them with the cancel, it’s a lot of fun. I’ve collected over 100 so far!

I’m also a collaborator for Canada’s Pictorial Cancels, where we’re collecting them to record measurements and get the run dates for the pictorial cancels. Some of my favourite pictorial cancels I’ve collected so far are: Bamfield (British Columbia), Christmas Island (Nova Scotia) and Bath (New Brunswick). I even have a spreadsheet to keep track of everything 🤓

I’ve also received a few pictorial cancels from other countries, check out these two from Portugal and Taiwan for WPD!!

Have you inspired anyone else to join Postcrossing or start collections of their own?

A few people in my life have signed up for Postcrossing after seeing the postcards (and joy from them) I’ve received! My house now has two postcrossers as my boyfriend signed up as well, we write cards together and enjoy going shopping for postcards.

Is there anything else that you are passionate about?

I love history, especially ancient history, and local history! Small town museums are my favourite. I think it’s important to learn as much as we can about the areas around us and the history behind it all.

Have you been surprised by any place that you have received a postcard from or sent a postcard to?

I received a card from Tunisia in 2023 (TN-8389)! My first card from Africa at the time. I sent a card to Réunion last year too (CA-1530232), I was impressed with how quickly it arrived!

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

So difficult to really narrow it down but there are three that stick out to me. The first (US-9381560), is from BabyLand (USA), home of the Cabbage Patch Kids. It’s such a wild card but I love it!! Then from Bretagne in France (FR-1686819), has a super neat cut out in the postcard which I think makes it super unique!! And lastly is from Germany (DE-14066134), because I absolutely love the art style and expressions on the buildings.

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

This is my local street mailbox! I always try to drop off my cards on my lunch so they can be picked up the same day.