Postcrossing Blog

Remember last year, when we invited you all to poke your local libraries to join the World Postcard Day? Some of you did, and we later saw pictures of many nice library events!

This year, we’d love to see even more libraries of all kinds join the fun. Whether it’s your local library, a school library, or even a Little Free Library in your neighborhood, putting up a poster and sharing some postcards there is the perfect way to invite visitors to celebrate the day! All you need is a nice basket, a stack of postcards, and one of our printable pamphlets (updated in this year’s World Postcard Day’s color!) to get people inspired.

In previous years, we’ve also mentioned children and school activities but postcards can also bring a lot of joy to places like elderly centers and retirement homes. Organizing a small postcard-writing or postcard-making workshop can be a nice, low-intensity activity for seniors, giving them the chance to do some crafts, share memories and connect with loved ones.

If you don’t work in such a place but know of one nearby, you can still brighten someone’s day by writing a few postcards to residents on October 1st! We really encourage you to suprise the seniors with a few nice postcards, sharing some stories and well wishes — we’re sure it’ll make their day!

Whether it’s a big library or a nursing home, postcards have the power to create connections everywhere. So why not make World Postcard Day an excuse to spread a little more kindness in the world?

And as always, we’d love to see what you come up with — so please share your plans and photos with the community. 😍 Besides sending some postcards on Postcrossing, who will you be writing to on World Postcard Day?

Do you remember last year, when we mentioned there would be a special souvenir on Geocaching for official events taking place around World Postcard Day? Well, it was a huge success: 19,260 geocachers attended at least one event during that week, and the number of events nearly doubled compared to 2023. We were blown away by these numbers, and are thrilled that Geocaching is continuing this collaboration in 2025! 🎉

So here’s the scoop: from September 28 to October 4, 2025, if you attend any official Geocaching event and log your attendance, you’ll receive a special World Postcard Day souvenir on your Geocaching account. The dates line up perfectly this year, with October 1 (World Postcard Day) falling right in the middle of the week.

For those who might not be familiar with it, Geocaching is a global treasure-hunting game played outdoors with the help of a GPS or smartphone. Players search for hidden containers (called “caches”) all around the world, sign their logbooks, and then share their adventures online. Much like Postcrossing, the community meetups on Geocaching are all about connection around a common hobby.

And what better way to celebrate that than by combining the two hobbies? Geocaching events are a great opportunity to meet fellow geocachers, exchange stories, and maybe even write a postcard or two. Some groups even organized joint Postcrossing + Geocaching meetups last year, and we’d love to see more of those in 2025!

If you can’t find an event nearby, you can always organize one yourself. Just remember that events need to be submitted at least two weeks in advance and meet all of Geocaching’s guidelines.

For inspiration, check out Geocaching’s wrap-up post from last year, filled with photos (and postcards!) from events all over the world.

Whether you’re out hunting for caches or sending a postcard across the globe, mark your calendars for the last week of September. Grab your GPS, pack a few postcards, and join the fun!

It’s tiiiiiiiiime! We know everyone is eager to know what the theme and postcard will be for this year’s World Postcard Day, so let’s go! This is 2025's World Postcard Day postcard, created by Uran Duo:

The theme of the postcard is the most classical of postcard sentences, “Wish you were here”. With just four words, it captures everything a postcard is about: the moment you pause, look around, and think of someone far away with whom you would love to share the view and the adventure you’re having. With this postcard, we aim to celebrate that instant of connection that postcards bring about.

Uran Duo is the artistic name of two married freelance illustrators based in Fujian, China. The husband and wife partners both studied graphic design at the China Academy of Art, and after graduation decided to focus on illustration. We were drawn to the grain‑rich texture and the whimsical nature of their work, whose rounded shapes, gentle curves and friendly characters give each scene an almost story‑book vibe.

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 you can use this design or any other postcards you have on hand — they’re all brilliant!

This will be the sixth 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, people they admire, those that need a bit of support or cheering up, children… 😊 Whether it’s your first or sixth time celebrating this special day, we hope you’re as excited as we are and that this will be the best one yet!

Ah, what a party! 🥳 We don’t even know where to start recapping how wonderful October 1st was… The sheer number of postcards, gatherings, forum posts, and social media shout-outs was overwhelming in the nicest way possible — like being swept up by a wave of enthusiasm, shared by people across the globe!

Some weeks ago, we encouraged you to contact your library and organize a little “basket of postcards” for visitors to enjoy on World Postcard Day, and many of you did just that. From the US to the Philippines, Singapore to Portugal, we loved seeing pictures of your library displays. One thing I did not anticipate was that some Free Little Libraries would also join the event, with their owners putting a box of postcards for the library visitors to pick up. Whoa!

Also, lots of schools took part in the festivities as well, which feels extra special. For instance, Kosovo Post visited the children at an SOS Kindergarten in Pristina to teach them about mail and postcards, and invite them to send some to their friends in other classrooms. Imagine their classmates’ delight when a real postman interrupted their class to deliver those cards — so sweet!

Speaking of sweets, so many stamp-shaped chocolate cookies were consumed around here that we were permanently giddy the whole day. In our sugar rush haze, we hypothesized how cool it would be if one of the big companies that makes these stamped shaped cookies (or the ravioli we also consumed!) would sponsor World Postcard Day… what do you think? Should we give them a call? 😋

Sooooo many meetups took place (both organized by postcrossers and geocachers), and we loved spotting your group pictures on Instagram and other social media. Some museums also took part in the day’s events, with guided tours, workshops or postcard coloring activities for children. We saw a few commemorative postmarks as well!

On Postcrossing servers’ side, things went remarkably smoothly, without any major hiccups. Pfeww! October 1st always puts a lot of pressure on the algorithm, which has to frantically scramble to select addresses to send postcards to. So you might receive a few more postcards than you were expecting in the coming weeks, but things will slowly go back to a more balanced state. Over 96,000 postcards were sent on World Postcard Day through Postcrossing on October 1st UTC (and almost 105,000 across all timezones), which was the day with the largest number of postcards sent on Postcrossing yet! It’s not the first time we break a record on World Postcard Day, but it still feels unreal to see those big numbers… Thank you everyone, for making this day so special!

And speaking of big parties — today, October 9, is World Post Day, and also UPU’s 150th anniversary! UN General Secretary António Guterres has recently said that “The UPU is one of the earliest examples of multilateralism in action”, and we believe this is what the world needs right now: countries working together to foster a more peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable future.

Many countries are issuing special philatelic products to mark this momentous milestone, and this might be the case with yours, so check them out! If not, you can always print the commemorative postcard (available in different languages) to send some special postcards in the coming weeks or months. Print the postcard at your local print shop or online printing service, affix a nice stamp (bonus points if it matches the theme!), and voilà — you have a special card that celebrates the 150th anniversary of the UPU.

Happy birthday UPU, and happy World Post Day! 🎂

It’s todaaaaaaaaaaay! October 1st is finally here, the day in which we celebrate these little pieces of handwritten communication that bring so much joy to the world!

Maybe you can hear the smooth scribbling sound that thousands of pens make while writing on all those postcards, and feel the excitement in the air? Us too! 😍

Quite a few people started celebrating last weekend already, with many meetings taking place over the last few days, but today is THE DAY that marks the 155th anniversary of our favorite form of communication. Our postcards are laid out on our desk, stamps to one side and pens to the other, with a warm drink in front and some stamp-shaped cookies too — we’re ready to get this party started!

We hope the collective enthusiasm of postcard lovers will be contagious, and that many people will hear about World Postcard Day today! We also wish all the postboxes in the world will be filled to the brim with nice mail — it’s a good day for a walk or a ride across town, to drop postcards in all the postboxes you can reach. How many do you think you’ll be able to feed?

When you need a little break, come join us on this forum topic or share some photos on social media with the tag #WorldPostcardDay. We’ll be highlighting these throughout the day, and keeping an eye on all the ways that World Postcard Day is being celebrated.

Have a brilliant day, filled with postcards and joy!