Postcrossing Blog

Friends, wasn’t World Postcard Day the most glorious celebration? The amount of postcards, meetings, posts on the forum, and mentions on social media was dizzying — it felt like being inside a whirlwind of excitement, shared by people all around the world! 😍

I feel like words are not enough to convey all the excitement… but let’s make an effort to document the day, and let’s start with children! Kosovo Post organized an activity at a school in Mitrovica, where they explained postcards to students, how to fill them in with the required information, where to write the address, where to put the postage stamps, etc., and also gave postcards to the pupils to mail to their friends from other classrooms. For many, this was probably their first contact with postcards, which is brilliant! We hope many of them will go on to become postcard and letter writers in the future.

Also, the Musée de La Poste in France had a special event for children, featuring not just postcards but also storytelling, music, dancing and poetry! This was part of the events surrounding their current exhibition “Nouvelles du paradis”, which will continue until March 18, 2024. If you’ll be around Paris until then, don’t miss it! In Portugal, the team from the Communications Museum walked the streets of Lisbon, offering postage-paid postcards to passersby, worth a free entry to the museum!

Dozens of meetups took place all around the world! From Chattanooga to Vilnius, Lahti to Veliky Novgorod, Bangalore to Jakarta! We enjoyed seeing the photos pop up on the forum — as well as photos of people writing or mailing their postcards, and all the tasty ravioli and other stamp-shaped food!

Remember when we put a limit in place for the day to try to reduce the number of postcards requested on October 1st (and thus relieve a bit of the pressure on Postcrossing’s algorithm)? Well, that plan backfired spectacularly! 😂 Maybe we unintentionally made it sound like the slots were special since they were limited…? Human psychology can be a mystery sometimes. The end result was that everyone seems to have interpreted this limit as a challenge, and we had the day with the most requested postcards ever in Postcrossing, just shy of 89,000 postcards! In total and across all the timezones, close to 98,000 postcards were sent and are now slowly making their way across the world. A stressful but very happy day indeed!

Thank you to every and each of you who sent out a postcard on October 1st and made this day the most exciting day of the year! We’re grateful for the enthusiastic way in which the Postcrossing community continues to embrace the event and has thus created something special that people look forward to every year.

And before we forget, today is World Post Day! The theme of 2023's event is “Together for Trust: Collaborating for a safe and connected future”. In the traditional speech for the occasion, UPU’s Director General Mr. Masahiko Metoki emphasized the historical and current significance of post offices as trustworthy hubs for diverse services, ranging from communication and commerce to finance. Recognizing the longstanding trust communities place in postal services, the statement points out that despite their vast reach, nearly 100,000 post offices globally lack proper internet access. To address this issue, the UPU’s connect.post initiative aims to provide every post office with internet access by 2030, with the goal of ensuring digital inclusion and enhancing the range of services, especially for underserved communities. Sounds like a great project!

Happy World Post Day everyone!

The most anticipated day of the year is here at last — it’s World Postcard Day! Today is the day we celebrate the joy and history of sending and receiving postcards, a tradition that now spans 154 years.

Celebratory World Postcard Day events have been taking place for a few days already, and they will continue for a few more but today is the BIG day, and so there will be a lot of postcard-writing! 😍 All around the world, people are setting up their desks or dining room tables, spreading out the postcards and stamps and address books and just writing, writing, writing! We hope you have some nutritious ravioli or stamp-shaped cookies by your side, to power this task of spreading postal hugs around the world. You can send them to postcrossers, but remember also to send them to friends, family and everyone else you think deserves a little love. In particular, think of the children in your life and their delight at receiving a special postcard when they open the mailbox next week… you could be their favorite person for a day with just one postcard!

To us, it’s really heartwarming to think of all the postboxes that will see some love this Sunday. Like our favorite ones in town, which we make sure to keep well-fed!

And as always, if you need a break from writing so many postcards, do come share with us how you’re getting along on your World Postcard Day celebrations in the comments below, on this forum topic, or on social media using the hashtag #worldpostcardday. We’ll be reposting and highlighting some photos and posts throughout the day, hoping to spread the word to even more people, and inspire them to write a few postcards too.

Wherever you are in the world, we hope you have the best World Postcard Day. Enjoy!

We’re in countdown mode for World Postcard Day around here, and the excitement for the big day is growing! This year, October 1st falls on a Sunday, which is perfect as many people don’t work on the weekend — that means more time to celebrate postcards!

With a little less than 2 weeks until World Postcard Day, it’s time to gather your postcards, check your address book, and make sure your favorite pen is inked and writing smoothly. This year’s theme is Postal Hugs, so take a moment to think of the loved ones you wish to reach out to, the friends you miss, or those you might want to send a bear hug to. Whether it’s your neighbors, a cherished teacher, the brave firefighters, or other people in your area who might have faced a challenge this year, send them a token of your appreciation and love. Save one for your local media outlet too, so you can tell them about this nice day! Got more ideas on who to send postcards to? Share in the comments! We’d love to hear them and get inspiration from you.

Like we mentioned in the stats email and on the forum, this year we’re going to set a maximum limit of 10 postcards for each postcrosser to send out on October 1st. 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 available, you’ll only be able to send 10 postcards on October 1st. While having people sending lots of postcards on the site and hitting records is always fun, it also puts a lot of pressure on Postcrossing: at some point, there just aren’t any more addresses to select. We came very close to that point last year, and this year we fear the problem will be made more complicated by the fact that World Postcard Day falls on a Sunday, a day when usually there is no mail delivery in most countries (and thus, even fewer addresses get thrown in the selection pool). So hopefully this limit will ensure that everything will go smoothly for everyone. Remember that you do need to send one postcard on Postcrossing during World Postcard Day (in your own timezone or during UTC — both work) in order to get the special badge on your profile, once it is registered.

As in previous years, local meetups, special postmarks and other events are on the horizon. To find out more about what’s happening in your area, check out the World Postcard Day events page. If you have young ones around, consider introducing them to the wonderful world of postcards: organize a mini-postcard workshop to teach them about the postal system, and then enjoy a short walk to your local mailbox together. Make sure to capture the moment with a photo and share it with us all! Or, if you have a talent for handicrafts, you can try to make something World Postcard Day-themed… like Jo (aka JustJo) who made this amazing postbox topper for her street! 😍

And last but not least, remember that the traditional meal for World Postcard Day is ravioli — they resemble little postage stamps! You might want to grab (or make!) some ahead of October 1st, so that you’re prepared and can celebrate the day with an extra dose of yumminess.

We wish you a brilliant World Postcard Day filled with joy, connections, and, of course, postcards! Let’s make it memorable and spread as many smiles as we can. And don’t forget to give your wrists a little break and a stretch now and then! 💪 💌 🌍

Alright, let’s do this! We’ve done our best to make sure everything was shipshape with the second most voted design by the judges, and now we’re ready to reveal it!

So jumping right into it, here is 2023's official World Postcard Day postcard, created by illustrator Lisa Saputra (aka lisasaputra) in Indonesia:

Lisa is a postcrosser as well as an indie children’s book illustrator (check out Tomo Kidsbook), and she still found the time to work on an entry for the contest! We love the style and the poetic interpretation of the topic that puts a shiny postcard right at the center of a hug. Congratulations, Lisa! 🎉

Here’s a short text she wrote about her submission:

Once in a blue moon, the two long lost friends meet and hug each other. Their hundreds of letters and postcards roamed the oceans before they finally met. Now they can say, “till we meet again, my dear friend!”

As always, we make the design available for free on the World Postcard Day website, and if you wish, you can print it at a local print shop or online printing service. And like we keep saying, any postcard sent on October 1st is a World Postcard Day postcard — so feel free to mail this or any other postcards you like or have available. They’re all brilliant! If you’re planning to send postcards on the day, we encourage you to share a picture of your postcards next to a mailbox on social media, using the hashtag #WorldPostcardDay, as a way to spread the word.

Let’s roll up our sleeves and start brainstorming ways to spread some happiness into unsuspecting mailboxes, so we can make this the best World Postcard Day yet!

We aim for Postcrossing to be a positive and supportive community, but sadly quite a few of the comments on our previous postcard announcement were not in that spirit… so, after much consideration, we’ve decided to keep the comments on this post closed. As usual, for questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to us.

We’re writing this post to address an important matter concerning the recently concluded World Postcard Day 2023 design contest.

Despite our best efforts, we failed to detect that the winning design of this year’s World Postcard Day contest was based on a stock image, and thus did not follow the rules of the contest (which call for the submission of original artworks, made by the person). Upon becoming aware of this issue, we immediately recalled the design.

Both Paulo and I deeply regret this oversight. We understand and share the anticipation and excitement with which our community, contestants, and global enthusiasts await this special day, and thus recognize the magnitude of this lapse. As the organizers, we truly apologize for not living up to the standards we set for this event.

In light of this, the design that garnered the second highest number of votes will be rightfully declared the contest winner. We are working to finalize and release this new design, which we hope will happen in the next few days. We aim to ensure that every aspect of it aligns with the contest’s rules, especially given the circumstances. To those who have already printed the previous design, we’re really sorry about this.

Going forward, we will reconsider the format of the design contest and what extra measures can be taken to make sure a situation like this does not happen again. We will also take into account the increasing use of AI tools in image creation, a challenge that makes it increasingly harder to determine originality and authorship.

Given the nature of this post, we’ve closed the comments. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to hear from you: for any concerns or feedback, please reach out to us directly.