Postcrossing Blog

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!

Some time ago, the Little Mail Carriers got wind that Andry (aka Andry1961) and Maret (aka Cerres) were preparing for a very exciting trip to the Pacific. As dedicated travel mode enthusiasts, they jumped at the opportunity to join them on their journey!

Hi everyone! The goal of the trip was to visit Pacific islands belonging to various countries where Postcrossing was not yet well-known. The journey took off from Tallinn Airport, and of course, there are no direct flights to these desired islands, so our route also included other major country post offices along the way.

The first stop was Istanbul, Turkey. The Turkish Post (or PTT) has a presence at Istanbul Airport. Most postcards sent from the country are shipped to other nations via their national airline, Turkish Airlines. We also took the longer flights on the same airline during this trip.

The plane landed in Singapore, but it’s easy to travel from the airport to the neighboring country of Malaysia via public transportation… so that’s exactly what we did on our layover! Across the border in Johor Bahru, a friendly postal worker lady Farah helped us stamp our postcards at the local post office. While the stamping was done at the post office, the postcards themselves had to be deposited in an external mailbox, from where they were sent to the sorting center.

Back in Singapore, there are post offices with varying opening hours all over the city, but to ensure we made it to the next flight on time, we decided to mail the postcards from the airport post office. By the time we arrived, it was already closed, so we dropped the cards in the mailbox before jumping on our next flight.

After 10.5 hours in the air, we were approaching our main destination. What motivated people to sail on their small vessels to unknown waters thousands of years ago is still a topic of debate among scientists. We support the idea that curiosity and the desire to explore foreign lands drove us, just as it did for those early explorers.

Our first stop in the South Pacific was Grande Terre, the largest island of New Caledonia. New Caledonia is a French overseas territory (technically, a sui generis collectivity) situated in the Pacific Ocean. It encompasses over 300 islands and islets and is located between Australia and Fiji. The native population is the Kanak people, but there are also many inhabitants of French origin and their descendants living on the island.

British explorer James Cook became the first European to visit New Caledonia on September 4, 1774. In the mid-19th century, it transformed into a French colony, and by 1946, it became a French overseas territory.

Nouméa welcomed us on the morning of September 26 with cheerful and windy 20-degree Celsius weather. However, since it was a Saturday, we had to rush to the post office. Only some post offices are open for half a day on Saturdays, and they are all closed on Sundays.

Apart from us, there were many other visitors at the post office. The official name of the postal operator in New Caledonia is the Office des Postes et Télécommunications, which manages mail, phone, and internet services, as well as banking services. We were the only ones on that morning sending postcards.

We were graciously assisted by the lovely lady Melatia. Postcards sent from here are routed to Europe through France, while direct connections are available to the USA and Australia. To our delight, we discovered that New Caledonia, despite being a French overseas territory, has its own unique postage stamps… so it was a nice opportunity to see these distinctive stamps!

Nevertheless, the visit to the post office was not the sole item on our agenda. We also joined in to support our travel companion Cerres, who participated in the 7th Marathon International Mobil of New Caledonia 10 km run, where she achieved a personal record. YAY! 🎉

To close the trip, we checked out the Great South Lagoon of New Caledonia, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2008. We also had the opportunity to explore one of the many exquisite national parks on this remarkable island — Blue River Park! It was amazing to see the river meander through the backdrop of red earth and the ancient kaori trees, some of which are more than 1,000 years old!

This was just the first leg of our Pacific adventure though, and our hosts Andry and Maret tell us there’s still a lot more to come… so if you’re curious about small islands and their post offices, stay tuned to see where we’ll land next! 😊

We’ve mentioned #xtremephilately and #xtremedeltiology on the blog before — they’re those pictures you take when you put a stamp or postcard in front of the place featured on them. Like these:

But here’s something extra cool: piXPost is a new app that allows you to put those stamp and postcard pictures (as well as pictures of postboxes, post offices and events) on the map, to share with others! Graham Beck (from Youtube channel Exploring Stamps) shows you what it’s all about:

I’ve been taking pictures of postboxes and postcards for a loooong time now, mostly for fun, and I know lots of you do this as well. But now we can share them among us and with other postal lovers around the world, to let everyone know where these special places are! Ever since signing up, I find myself going out of my way to photograph even more postboxes, post offices, stamps and postcards everywhere. I can’t help it — I want them aaaaall on the map! And I can definitely see myself checking the app before traveling, to plan my trip around the local postal highlights. 😍

There are a few gamification aspects of the app that work really well too. First of all, you can “claim” a postbox by being the first person to pin it on the global map with a photo. That will make you “XP1” — explorer number 1! But there are also tons of fun badges to collect, for pinning a certain number of items in each category or country. It’s really fun to collect these… and a little addictive too, I must say.

piXPost is free and available on the App Store for iOS devices or on Google Play for Android ones. We hope lots of you will give it a go, so that the map gets full to the brim with fun spots for future postal adventures!

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 has snuck up on me this year, but it’s actually my birthday month! Which means I’m hoping to get good and spoilt, of course, and that will hopefully include some chocolate and sweets. Which inspired me to pick this month’s prompt: maybe you can all give me some ideas about what to try!

I thought this would be an easy way to answer, but hmmm, what’s my favourite?! I guess at the moment it’s a ridiculously sweet little bar my dad started buying for me: the McVitie’s Gold Bar. They have a biscuit centre, covered in a caramel-flavour coating. They really are very sweet, but I like that, and I especially enjoy how crunchy the biscuit part is.

For a slightly more traditional British sweet, well, I’d have to go with the aniseed flavour chewy sweets called Black Jacks, and the related fruit-flavoured Fruit Salads. I don’t get them a lot, because it’s not very professional to go around with my tongue stained black… but sometimes, as a little pick-me-up!

What about you? What’s your favourite treat? Is it something global, or a local secret? We’d love to hear from you in the comments here, and if you’re stumped for something to write a postcard, you can use this as a prompt!

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!