Postcrossing Blog

Now that our birthday shenanigans are over and we’ve recovered from the excitement of seeing so many of you join the Postcard Lounge and write postcards with us, we can finally jump to the next very important item on the agenda… World Postcard Day!

It’s time to reveal this year’s theme and design! So, without further ado, here’s 2026's World Postcard Day postcard, created by postcrosser Oce (aka ohhsayy):

This year’s theme is “Paper Bridges” — a way of thinking about postcards that feels almost obvious once you say it out loud, and yet is easy to forget in the everyday rush of writing and mailing. Every postcard begins as a small piece of paper… but once it is written, stamped, and sent, it becomes something much larger: a bridge between two people. “Paper Bridges” celebrates that little metamorphosis, the way a flat, ordinary object turns into a very special form of connection that spans the distance between sender and recipient.

Oce’s design plays with this idea beautifully, using folded-paper shapes, bold lettering, and bridge-like forms woven right into the typography. Arches and ribbons of paper curve across the card as if the letters themselves were built to connect one side to the other. The textured background will look particularly nice in textured paper, so if the service you use to print postcards offers that option, give it a try!

We first crossed paths with Oce at the Boston Stamp Show, where we got to see his work up close and were immediately drawn to it. He’s based in California, and if his name sounds familiar, it’s probably because he’s no stranger to the Postcrossing community: Oce has designed many postcards and special cancellation marks for meetups, and by now his playful, graphic style has become a familiar sight to quite a few of you already. We’re thrilled to have him bring that style to this year’s official postcard!

The design is, as usual, free to download, so you can have it printed locally or through any online service. Remember that every postcard posted on October 1st counts as a World Postcard Day card, so feel free to use this design or any other postcards you have on hand — they’re all good!

This year, we’re also trying something new: a black-and-white outline version of the postcard, designed for coloring in by hand. We first created a version like this a few years ago for a museum activity, and it was such a hit with young visitors that we thought it was time to share the idea with the wider community too — so that kids (and kids at heart!) everywhere can print it out (in uncoated paper), grab their favorite pencils or markers, and make the design their own on paper. You can find it alongside the regular design on the World Postcard Day website.

This will be the seventh World Postcard Day we celebrate together! For those of you who are new to it, October 1st is the anniversary of the first postcard ever sent, and has thus been chosen as the day to celebrate postcards. It’s a day that goes beyond Postcrossing — a day when everyone is invited to send a postcard to friends, family, children, people they admire, those that need a bit of support or cheering up… 😊

So… got any paper bridges to build this year? Whether it’s your first or seventh time celebrating, we hope you’re as excited as we are, and that this will be the best one yet!

It’s our birthday today! Hurraaaaaaaay!! 🎉🥳🎉

Postcrossing turns 21 today, and it feels both completely impossible and somehow true. Twenty-one years of postcards crossing oceans, borders, mountains, deserts and kitchen tables… one small handwritten message at a time.

Postcrossing started back in 2005 with what was just a little experiment: what if strangers around the world could send each other real postcards, and the internet could help make that happen? All these years later, that idea is still going, carried by all of you: the people choosing postcards, writing messages, licking stamps, walking to postboxes, and making someone’s mailbox a little happier. Multiply that by 87 million postcards, and suddenly this little experiment becomes something much bigger: a worldwide web of connections made out of paper, handwriting, stamps, and friendly surprises.

Thank you for being part of Postcrossing, whether you joined yesterday or have been here since 2005. Thank you for every postcard sent, every kind message written, every meetup organized, every mailbox checked with hope… and every bit of patience when the mail takes the scenic route. A special thank you as well to everyone who spread the word, hosted a meetup, helped out on the forum or helped us keep the lights on!

To celebrate today, we’re also bringing back the Postcard Lounge! If you’d like to write some postcards in the quiet company of other postcrossers head over to the Postcard Lounge page. Bring some postcards, your favorite pen, maybe a cup of tea or coffee, and come write with us for a little while!

Here’s to 21 years of postcard magic, and to all the postcards still waiting to be written, sent, traveled, received and smiled over. Thank you for making this community what it is! 💙

Postcrossing’s 21st anniversary is almost here (hurray!), and we’re bringing back something we tried last year and ended up loving: the Postcard Lounge!

For those of you who have not joined the last time, the idea is simple: an online space where the community can quietly write postcards together. Everyone joins on video but stays muted — just a shared little window into desks, postcards, pens, stamps, and people writing mail in different corners of the planet.

We first tried this during Postcrossing’s 20th anniversary and then again for World Postcard Day, and both times were really cozy experiences. There’s something comforting about sitting down to write a few cards and knowing that, at that exact moment, other postcrossers are doing the same thing somewhere else in the world.

So we’re doing it again for the 21st anniversary! On July 14th, the Postcard Lounge will be open for a few hours (in UTC), and you’ll be able to join through this page:

Postcard Lounge 📮

That page shows the opening hours in your own time zone, so you don’t need to do any time zone math. On the day itself, it’s also where you’ll find the button to join the call. If you can’t join the video call directly, you’ll still be able to watch the livestreamed grid of participants on the same page.

As before, this is meant to be a calm, friendly space to write postcards in good company. Bring a few cards, your favorite pen, maybe a cup of tea or coffee, and come hang out quietly with postcrossers around the world for a little while.

We hope to see you there on July 14th — and we hope many postcards will start their journeys from this tiny online lounge!

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!

This month’s writing prompt about flavours! Different countries have different cuisines and can shape different preferences, or at least that’s what I’ve heard! I wonder if it’s true. So if you’re not sure what to write on your postcards this month, how about this?

I’m going to cop out straight away: I like all of them! It really depends on my mood. I pretty much alternate between sweet and salty when it comes to snacks, I suppose: my usual choice would be between something sweet like chocolate or a biscuit, or something salty like salted popcorn or maybe crisps (AKA potato chips in some countries) or tortilla chips.

That said, I’d also never say no to a sour treat like Haribo Tangfastics or sour Skittles…

Though I do like all three, I suppose I could rank them, and I thiiink it’s probably sweet > salty > sour… or maybe sweet = salty > sour. But I wouldn’t like to lose any of those options, haha! I don’t know if this was shaped by being British: growing up we ate Indian and Chinese food as well (or at least British-friendly versions of those, since I know the recipes are often adapted in the UK!), and I’ve developed a love of Mexican food as an adult… but I’m definitely curious if other people rank things differently and think that’s due to what they ate growing up!

Alright, now it’s your turn: what do you prefer? And do you think that’s influenced by the cuisine/s you grew up with? Feel free to answer in the comments if you like, but you can also use this prompt to help you fill out that blank space if you’re not sure what to write on your postcards this month.

Every so often, I review books related to postcards or postal stuff in general on this blog, which is a fact that rapidly everyone in my life is getting to learn! Recently a friend stumbled across an older book they thought I’d surely be amused by: Martin Parr's Boring Postcards USA. I definitely enjoyed looking through it, so here I am to tell the rest of you about it! I’m pretty certain it’s out of print, but there are plenty of copies out there on the second-hand market. I’ve even found a version that seems to have been released in Germany, as Langweilige Postkarten!

Despite the title being “Boring Postcards”, I actually thought when reading it that there were definitely cards that postcrossers I’ve corresponded with would have loved to receive: advertising postcards showing tools, for example! Most of the postcards are super, super mundane: parking lots and highways and hotel rooms… but I can imagine people sending them all the same to show where they’ve actually been, or as a novelty, or for people for whom the landscapes are unfamiliar.

I’ll share a couple of the images with you all, to give you some examples, though the quality of the images won’t be great! I won’t share too many, as the images are pretty much all there is to it, except for some captions… but it’ll give you an idea!

I think the postcards might seem boring on the surface, but there’s definitely an attraction in imagining who might send or receive these, and I’d bet there are collectors who’d love some of these. Do you have any “boring postcards” like these of your own to send?

As ever, I’m eager to hear suggestions for other post-related books to read and review, especially ones which specifically focus on postcards! The best place to let me know is via the forum thread; if you haven’t posted in the forum before, you might need to browse a little bit first to open up all the areas of the forum.