Postcrossing Blog

It’s less than one week until World Postcard Day, and we can feel those pens getting a little antsy in anticipation… Are we all ready for the big day? 😍 Even if you are not quite fully ready yet, there’s still time to make this the best World Postcard Day yet!

Just like last year, we’re keeping the maximum limit of 10 postcards for each postcrosser to send out on October 1st. We do this because we only have so many addresses available on any given day, and we risk running out of them. :( So, how does it work? If you only have a couple of slots available, you’ll be able to send a couple of postcards. If you have 5, you can request 5 addresses. But if you have 10 or more slots open, you’ll only be able to send 10 postcards on October 1st. Remember that you have to send one postcard on World Postcard Day in order to receive the special “WPD badge” when that card gets registered… but you don’t need to send your maximum allowance. Please be mindful of others and of the limited number of addresses available. 🙏😅

That said, we really encourage everyone to send postcards to people beyond Postcrossing who might not be expecting them: your faraway friends and relatives, the children in your family, your favorite school teachers, the hardworking fire brigade, people in your local nursing home, someone whose work you admire in your community… Anyone who could use some cheering up or support is a good candidate to receive a postcard too! If you have good suggestions for potential postcard recipients, leave them in the comments — we’d love to know whom you’re mailing your cards to on this special day.

Dinah over at The Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society suggested connecting sister cities on World Postcard Day, by sending a few postcards to your town’s twinned places. It’s a nice way to do some cultural exchange and bring distant cities together through postcards!

There are lots of Postcrossing meetups taking place a bit all over the world — more than 100 planned so far! Geocaching is also joining the festivities this year, encouraging its members to attend gatherings between September 29 and October 5 in order to receive a special World Postcard Day–themed souvenir. With so many events, it’s likely there is one close to many of you out there… so do take a look! This could be your opportunity to meet some friendly peeps who also love coming home to a postcard in their mailbox.

Another way you can participate is by taking some postcards to your local library, and talking them into offering these to patrons on October 1st! I’ve done this with my own library, and they were quite enthusiastic about the idea. And if you are in a school, remember that this is a good day to use our lesson plan (available in several languages) to teach a class about postcards, stamps and mail in general. Other ideas or photos of activities you might organize are always welcome! You can share them on this forum topic.

Finally, don’t forget that the classic dish for World Postcard Day is ravioli — they look like tiny postage stamps! Consider picking some up (or even making them!) before October 1st, so you’re ready to enjoy the day with a delicious twist.

We hope you have an amazing World Postcard Day, full of happiness, connections, and plenty of postcards! Let’s make it unforgettable and bring smiles to as many faces as possible!

Several years ago, we stumbled upon a charming photo from Lane Library at Ripon College in Wisconsin, showcasing their display for World Postcard Day, and the memory of it has lingered with us ever since. At the event, they placed a basket of fun postcards at their counter, inviting visitors to pick out one or two to send to their loved ones. It was a very simple thing, yet also a meaningful way to spread joy and celebrate World Postcard Day, while simultaneously bringing libraries (which are some of our absolute favorite places) into the festivities!

This year, we’d like to encourage you all to replicate this heartwarming idea! Check with your local library to see if they’d be open to participating. If so, all you need is a charming basket, a selection of postcards, and either our printable pamphlet or your own creative version. Once everything is set, you’re ready to spread some postcard magic in your town!

Another wonderful way to celebrate World Postcard Day is by hosting a postcard-making or writing workshop in your community. Gather some blank postcards for decorating or standard ones for writing, and invite friends and neighbors to join in. If you’re a parent, this can be a fantastic opportunity to engage children of all ages in the fun of postcard creation. There’s something so special about decorating postcards or writing heartfelt messages to friends and family. To cap off the event, consider a little excursion to the nearest postbox to send out everyone’s creations!

If you decide to take part and do something special for the day, we’d love to see it — please share your plans and snapshots with us! 😍

Have you ever heard of Geocaching? It’s a fun treasure hunt activity that consists of finding small containers (aka caches) that others have hid all around the world, aided by clues and GPS coordinates. We’ve played it for almost as long as we’ve run Postcrossing, and enjoy searching for these little canisters and tupperwares wherever we go. It’s a fun challenge and a different way to explore the world, luring us to nice places we might have otherwise missed. Some caches are hidden in picturesque parks, others in bustling urban spots — and every single one has its own story and little surprises inside, often including small trinkets left by other geocachers.

If you’re new to the hobby, we encourage you to give it a go! All you need is a smartphone with GPS to get started. There are millions of caches hidden worldwide, waiting to be discovered. But for those of you who are already part of the Geocaching community (and we know many postcrossers are also geocachers), we wanted to give you a heads-up about something special: a World Postcard Day themed souvenir!

From September 29 to October 5, 2024, Geocaching is celebrating World Postcard Day with a twist. If you attend any official Geocaching event during this period and post an “Attended log” for that event, you’ll receive a special World Postcard Day souvenir on your Geocaching account. It’s a fun way to celebrate postcards and geocaching simultaneously!

There are plenty of events happening worldwide during that week, so all you have to do is find one near you, go, and log your attendance. It’s a great opportunity to meet fellow geocachers, exchange tips, stories, and maybe even send some postcards! And if you can’t find an event near you, you can always organize one! There’s still time to plan a postcard-themed Geocaching event — and we think it would be extra fun to combine it with a Postcrossing meetup! This could be a nice way to bring together two communities that love exploration and connection.

For those of us who are both geocachers and postcrossers, this crossover event is a dream come true, combining both hobbies at once. Whether you’re exploring new cache hiding spots or mailing postcards to someone across the globe, this is a good time to share your love for adventure, discovery, and connection with others. So pack your GPS, grab a few postcards, and join the fun!

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!

August was my birthday month, and my wedding anniversary also falls in August, so I had a well-fed month! For my birthday, my family always choose the same place to celebrate, so I was wondering about everyone else… which leads in to this prompt.

Both me and my sister always celebrate our birthdays with food from a Cantonese restaurant in Wakefield, called (perhaps a little non-originally) Pagoda. Usually when we go in person we get a banquet meal for the group, because (with a couple of substitutions) it contains all our favourites: chicken and sweetcorn soup, sesame prawn toast and crispy wontons for appetizers, crispy duck with pancakes… and that’s all before we get to the main course, where we usually get a few options. Personally, I gravitate toward lemon or orange chicken, along with a little bit of sweet and sour pork—though I do like stealing the onions from everyone else’s choices, too.

And finally we do like to wrap up with dessert, even if it doesn’t really match the meal: my sister likes a slice of lemon meringue pie, while I usually either plump for the same or go for a slice of chocolate fudge cake. After that, we just about need to be rolled out of our seats and off to the car to get home… and I don’t think any of us eat much the next day. There’s a reason it’s a special treat!

Are you feeling hungry yet? I think I am… Tell us about your favourites here, or consider writing about them on your postcards this month if you’re stumped for what to say!

Up until a couple of centuries ago, sending a letter was very different from today. For instance, postage was often paid by the recipient based on the distance traveled and the number of sheets it contained. Even after stamps were introduced, sending something to another country was an odyssey involving acquiring stamps from all the intermediary countries, and also engaging the services of private couriers, diplomatic channels, or securing transport along with the ship’s cargo… You can probably guess there weren’t that many international penpals back then. 😅

But this all changed in 1874! Heinrich von Stephan, the visionary postmaster-general of the German Reichspost (and the person who first floated the idea of a postcard!), suggested countries should meet and discuss the postal status quo in an international conference to see if they could work out a better way to do things. And they did! Representatives from 22 countries got together in Switzerland with the goal of reforming the postal sector and improving the efficiency and reliability of international mail. There were many technical issues to resolve… but after a few days of intense negotiations, they managed to put together a system that would be fair to all countries, regardless of their size or the volume of mail they handled. On 9 October of the same year, a date now celebrated worldwide as World Post Day, the Treaty of Bern, establishing the General Postal Union, was signed. The Union’s membership grew so quickly that it changed its name in 1878 to Universal Postal Union (aka, the UPU)!

The goal of the Treaty of Bern was to create a single postal territory for the exchange of international mail, simplifying and standardizing things. In practice, this meant that all members of the union allowed the free transit of international mail through their territories without additional charges, and also agreed to treat the delivery of incoming international mail the same way as domestic mail. The treaty also established uniform postal rates for international mail, making it easier and more affordable to send letters and postcards. It meant that items could be mailed from any one member country to another with just one stamp, no matter how far they needed to travel or how many countries they traveled through. This might seem like a small change, but it had a massive impact on how people communicated and did business across borders.

All of this happened 150 years ago, and since then, the UPU has expanded to foster collaboration between 192 member countries in the different areas that relate to mail. Whether it’s coming up with standards, supporting the development of e-commerce, improving quality of service and mail security, or helping to ensure that postal services are accessible to everyone, the UPU has been on top of it for decades. Every time you write an address, fill out a customs form or check a tracking code, you can thank the UPU for their work!

So this year, on October 9th, the UPU celebrates its 150th anniversary, and you can imagine this is a big deal. A few countries are planning to issue special stamps to honor the occasion, and Postcrossing has joined the celebrations too on the campaign “A maximum card for maximum worldwide fun!”

For this campaign, the UPU has designed a special commemorative postage stamp, cancellation mark and matching postcard, and invited postal operators to issue it in their country so that people worldwide can celebrate too. 😊 The postcard has a little blurb about Postcrossing on the writing side, encouraging the person to send out the postcard into the world and receive one back as a way to celebrate the work of the UPU. A few countries have confirmed their participation in this activity so far (Belarus, Nigeria, Oman, Russia, Lithuania, Tunisia and United Arab Emirates), but we hope more will join and that we’ll see many of these postcards traveling around the world on October 9th, which is World Post Day. Keep an eye out for them!

PS: If you’re curious to see what the UPU headquarters look like, check out this travel report from the Little Mail Carriers some years ago!