Postcrossing Blog

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!

To mark Postcrossing’s 20th birthday, PostNL commissioned Gouda‑based designer Sandra Smulders (whose portfolio already includes quite a few Dutch stamps) to create a celebratory stamp. On July 14, the new stamps went on sale — a lively sheet of red‑white‑blue zigzags that hints at both the Dutch flag and the criss-crossing of postcards. We especially like the unique dented pattern on the bottom of the stamp!

We spoke with Sandra about the ideas behind the design, the little details hidden in each stamp, and how it feels to watch her work fly through the mail in all the postcards. :)

What was your initial reaction when you were asked to design a stamp for Postcrossing’s 20th anniversary?

I am always happy when asked to design a stamp sheet. Usually, the ideas only come to me once I have delved into the subject, but with Postcrossing, I immediately saw the arrows in my mind’s eye. This ultimately became the basis for the design. So this subject suited me very well in terms of design. I therefore set to work on this assignment with great enthusiasm.

Can you walk us through your creative process for this stamp sheet — where did you start, and how did the concept evolve?

I began with two things in mind: a bold zig‑zag arrow pattern and a horizontal sheet with the stamps centered. From there everything clicked into place.

The red‑white‑blue bars stretch across the sheet to form a subtle Dutch flag; rotating the bottom row of stamps 180° let the blue bar span two stamps and stay the same width as the red and white. To add depth I overlaid each bar with grey tints and simple monochrome icons that sum up Postcrossing: paper‑chain people for the project’s friendship, a world map on the blue “water” strip for global reach, and postcards, naturally. Hand‑written‑style lettering fills the remaining triangles, while the “sorting hook” and the value “1” sit opposite each other for balance. A few diagonal guide lines finish the sheet, tying the layers together and giving the design its sense of movement.

Have you sent or received postcards yourself through Postcrossing, or do you perhaps have a special memory in connection to snail mail that you can share?

I don’t send or receive cards myself and I don’t (yet) participate in Postcrossing. But I do like to send and receive cards or mail. Receiving mail is so much fun. As a teenager, I had several pen pals and sent letters all over the world. I really enjoyed it when I received a reply. Who knows, maybe I’ll take this up again in the future.

As a stamp designer, what’s it like to see your work travel the world on thousands of postcards? :)

It’s certainly very nice that many people around the world will see my work. Even if they don’t know it’s mine. Who knows where my work will end up? And maybe this is a step closer to my international design career.

Has it really been 20 years? The mind boggles at the number… that’s two whole decades spent thinking about this wild idea of connecting the world through postcards. 7,671 days of postcards, stamps, addresses, smiles, and stories. No one could have predicted this adventure would last this long… and yet, here we are. We’re so grateful for all these years, and especially grateful to the over 800,000 of you who joined us for the ride! THANK YOU! 💙

When I reflect on this milestone, I think a lot about creation versus maintenance. Putting something new in the world — whether it’s a project, a community, or even a child — is one thing. But caring for it and keeping it going year after year takes a very different kind of energy. There are countless hours behind the scenes (and the screens) filled with routine, repetition, and sometimes quite a bit of drudgery, just to keep things running smoothly.

But then, there are the stories. The unexpected postcards that bring someone to tears. The joy of discovering a new place or culture. The child learning geography from a map full of colorful cards. The grandma feeling less alone because someone, somewhere, thought of them. All these small and simple connections often make a very big difference in someone’s day, in their understanding of the world, or sometimes even in their sense of belonging. They’re the quiet proof that connection, even through something as analog as a postcard, still matters very much today — perhaps even more.

To everyone who has helped Postcrossing thrive, a very special thank you. Whether you’ve spread the word, hosted a meetup, helped out on the forum, sent feedback or helped support the project financially: you’ve helped keep this idea alive. ❤️ Your enthusiasm and generosity make all the difference.

Now it’s time for celebrations, and you guys have really come through! Our anniversary gallery is also brimming with nice photos of postcrossers and their 20 postcards, which is just a delight to see! If you haven’t posted your photo yet, we invite you to do so today. We’re all a community here, and seeing other people from all over the world who have this one thing in common with us feels really special.

There are an astonishing 179 meetups happening around the world marking the occasion, and so we hope many of you will have (or had) the chance to join to meet old friends or make new ones. 😍 In Germany, in the USA and in Poland (at the Warsaw Post Office 1's Philatelic Shop), special cancellation postmarks have been made for the occasion, so look out for those!

And if you didn’t get the chance to join a meetup, we invite you to join us in the Postcard Lounge today, for a relaxing moment of postcard writing! It’s a silent streaming room and an experiment in connection — a place where we sit down to write postcards together (but apart). Put some music on, grab your favorite drink and some postcards, and take a seat at our virtual table! ☺️

And last but not least, we also have exciting news for postcrossers in the Netherlands: PostNL is launching a celebratory stamp for this very special occasion! Hoera! 🎉

They should be available on PostNL’s shop from today, and we’re going to tell you more about this stamp in an upcoming interview with its designer… but for now, we leave you with a small introduction to the stamp:

"The Postcrossing stamp sheet, designed by Sandra Smulders, visualises the global exchange of postcards through bold geometric shapes and zigzagging lines. Inspired by the idea of connection and reciprocity, the design features triangles and rectangles symbolising people, postcards, and the world.

A red-white-blue colour scheme subtly forms the Dutch flag, while dynamic lines represent the movement of mail across borders. The central layout and repeating elements create balance and unity, capturing the spirit of Postcrossing—sharing, receiving, and connecting through mail."

So that’s it! Whether you’re joining a meetup, writing a card, or just quietly smiling at your mailbox, we hope you’ll find a little moment to celebrate this milestone in your own way. Eat some cake, raise a glass, dig into your postcard stash, or do a little happy dance — whatever feels most festive to you! And if you do something special to mark the occasion, we’d love to see it: feel free to share your celebration with us and the community on the forum or on social media, using the hashtag #postcrossing20.

Thanks for being part of this journey. Here’s to postcards, to people, and to the power of small things. And here’s to the next 20 years, come what may! 🎉

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!

Sometimes we pick a writing prompt from someone in the forums, and this month’s was posted a while ago, and comes from Helen (aka helenis). She was curious about what painter from past centuries you’d order your painting from—which sounds like a fascinating question to me!

I have to confess that I couldn’t answer this off the top of my head. I’m not a very visual thinker, so I’ve never had a big interest in art. (Cringe! I’m sorry.) But I did know the style I really like, so I poked around the internet and ended up with a very firm favourite: Alphonse Mucha, a Czech artist who had a strong influence on the Art Nouveau movement.

There’s actually a fan artist who does Art Nouveau portraits of people’s Final Fantasy XIV characters, very much in this style, so maybe I really will order “my” portrait in this style. My character has much better style for it, let’s be honest.

Now’s the part where I get to learn more about all kinds of artists across the world! Which artist would you order your portrait from? Maybe someone local, or someone who created a style of their own? You can share it in the comments here, but you can also use it as a prompt for something to write on your postcards this month.

Some of you might have seen a picture of PT-1, the very first postcard ever sent through Postcrossing — the one that started it all! It’s a blue-skied postcard featuring three majestic lighthouses, sent by Paulo to Ana (that’s me!). As you can imagine, it’s always been a special postcard for us, but the publisher that made them has long closed and so they haven’t been available for many years. We always wished they would come back though…

So, especially for Postcrossing’s 20th anniversary, we took matters into our own hands: we worked out the legal bits, tracked down the original photographer, licensed the photos, and made it happen! 💪

The front of the card is true to the original one, and the back is designed to celebrate this milestone. And to make it even more special, we added something new too: a sheet of fun cinderella stamps! These aren’t real postage stamps, but they’re great for decorating your postcards on this special year. They feature Postcrossing’s iconic red “P” and a yellow “20”, the anniversary we’re celebrating.

Since it’s the 20th anniversary, each bundle has 20 postcards and a stampsheet with 20 decorative cinderella stamps, all wrapped up with a paper band.

We did a small batch of these, and they have just been added to the Postcrossing shop — so if you’d like to grab one, now’s your chance! Purchases will be limited to one pack per person, and we might print a few more if there’s enough interest. These will all be shipped from Europe.

This is our first time making a physical product from beginning to end (working with printers and suppliers, looking at different papers, thinking about packaging, etc.), and we’re eager to put all this knowledge into new fun things in the future. We hope you like the special anniversary bundle, and that we’ll see a few of these postcards pop up on the postcard walls over the coming months!