Last day to mail Christmas cards in 2026, plus postage and addresses

When to mail your Christmas cards in 2026

USPS publishes recommended send-by dates every autumn, and for cards with a stamp the one that counts is First-Class Mail: December 17, 2026. That is the last day to mail Christmas cards within the US if you want them to arrive before Christmas. It's a recommendation rather than a guarantee, and "in the mail" means handed in at a counter or dropped in a collection box before its last pickup, because a card posted after the pickup time doesn't leave until the next day. For cards going across the country, it's wise to aim a few days earlier. The table shows the dates USPS recommends for 2026, including the faster services and the earlier dates for military and international mail.

If you miss the First-Class date, Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express give you a little more time. Both cost far more than a stamp, so they make sense for one card to a grandparent rather than a list of forty, and the simplest way to send one is at a post office counter. For a long list that's running late, a card that arrives between Christmas and New Year's is still welcome, especially if the message looks ahead to the new year.

Cards to service members and to friends abroad need the most lead time, because they travel further and pass through more sorting along the way. A card to an APO, FPO or DPO address with an ordinary Forever stamp goes by First-Class Mail, so its date is December 9, 2026. A card abroad with a Global Forever stamp travels as ordinary international letter mail, which isn't faster than Priority Mail International, so treat December 9, 2026 as the very latest and post cards to distant countries well before then.

How much postage a Christmas card needs

Most Christmas cards are 5×7 cards in an A7 envelope (5¼ × 7¼ in) or smaller 4¼ × 5½ cards in an A2 envelope (4⅜ × 5¾ in). Both count as ordinary letters, and a folded card on regular cardstock, sealed in its envelope, usually weighs somewhere between half and three-quarters of an ounce. A Forever stamp pays for a letter of up to one ounce, so one Forever stamp ($0.82) is all a standard card needs, anywhere in the US. A short handwritten note or a single photo slipped inside rarely changes that.

Cards get heavier than you'd expect once you add a printed family newsletter, several photo prints or a thick layered design. A card that weighs more than one ounce but no more than two costs $1.11, which you can pay with one Forever stamp plus an additional-ounce stamp ($0.29); two Forever stamps also work, but they overpay. Before you stamp the whole stack, weigh one finished card on a kitchen scale, sealed and with everything inside, because a mistake on one card repeats on every card in the pile.

Square cards are the most common surprise. Sorting machines can't handle a square envelope, so USPS adds a nonmachinable surcharge on top of the normal postage, and the same applies to cards that are rigid, lumpy or uneven, for example with a button, a clasp or a pop-up that makes one end thicker. A square card still counts as a letter as long as it stays within the letter limits (Up to 11½ × 6⅛ in, ¼ in thick, 3.5 oz), so a 6 in square card that weighs under one ounce costs $1.31: the letter price plus the $0.49 nonmachinable surcharge. With a single Forever stamp it is short-paid, so put two Forever stamps on it, which overpays a little, or pay the exact amount at a post office counter. Decorations on the outside are a different case. For specially decorated envelopes, USPS lets you pay the non-machinable surcharge and ask the Post Office counter to hand-cancel them, and for wax seals, strings, ribbons and other decorations on the outside it advises not to send them exposed but to put the envelope inside another envelope. If you use an outer envelope, it carries the address and the stamp, and the decorated envelope travels inside it. If you'd rather have the decorated envelopes hand-canceled at a post office counter, USPS charges the nonmachinable surcharge for that, so a one-ounce card costs $1.31 instead of one Forever stamp.

The larger square sizes, and any card made too thick by layers or embellishments, don't count as a letter at all. They pay the large-envelope price, from $1.69, and if they're also rigid or lumpy they can be charged as a package. Our page on square envelopes shows the current surcharge and which common square sizes still count as letters, and the stamp calculator works out the postage for your card's size and weight.

Cards to other countries need a Global Forever stamp ($1.75), which covers a one-ounce letter to any country, Canada and Mexico included, because one ordinary Forever stamp is only worth the price of a one-ounce letter within the US, which isn't enough for a card abroad. Heavier cards abroad also climb in price faster than at home: a two-ounce card costs $2.35 to Canada and $3.50 to countries beyond Canada and Mexico. The square-card surcharge applies abroad too, so a square card to another country needs more than one Global Forever stamp; have one priced at a post office counter before you stamp the rest. The current US stamp prices list every weight step for domestic and international letters.

Christmas stamps cost the same as any Forever stamp

The Christmas stamps USPS issues each year are Forever stamps with a holiday design. They cost the same $0.82 each, or $16.40 for a book of 20, and they pay exactly the same postage as the everyday designs, so choosing one is only about how the envelope looks. The weight and size rules don't change either, which means a holiday stamp on a square or heavy card still needs the extra postage described above.

Because they're Forever stamps, they never expire and always count at the current price of a one-ounce First-Class letter. That price has applied since July 12, 2026, and as of November 8, 2026, no change has been announced yet; even if it goes up later, a holiday stamp you buy now still covers a standard card next December. Leftovers aren't wasted either, since a holiday stamp on a utility bill in March is perfectly good postage.

To work out how many to buy, count domestic and international cards separately. A list of 45 cards with 3 going abroad needs 42 Forever stamps, which is three books of 20 with 18 to spare, plus 3 Global Forever stamps. Post offices and the USPS online store sell the holiday designs, and many supermarkets and pharmacies that sell stamps carry them too, but popular designs can sell out in December, so it pays to buy early.

How to address a card to a family or couple

The envelope layout for a Christmas card is the same as for any letter: the recipient's name and address in the middle, your return address in the top left corner and the stamp in the top right. Our guide on how to address an envelope explains each line with examples. What makes holiday cards different is the first line, because you're often writing to a whole household or a couple rather than one person. These are the usual ways to write that name line, from the most general to the most formal:

• The Smith Family, for everyone in the household, children included.
• The Smiths, which means the same and sounds a little more casual.
• John and Mary Smith, for a couple who share a last name.
• Mr. and Mrs. John Smith, the traditional formal form, which some couples still prefer and others find dated.
• Mary Lopez and John Smith, for a couple with different last names.

A family name in the plural never takes an apostrophe. The Smiths means several people called Smith, while The Smith's means something belonging to one Smith, so the apostrophe version is wrong on an envelope. Names that end in s, x, z, ch or sh add -es, as in the Joneses, the Martinezes, the Foxes and the Churches, and never become the Jones' or the Jones's. If a plural like that looks odd to you, write The Jones Family instead, which is correct and sidesteps the question.

Which form to use depends on how well you know the people. Both first names or The Smith Family read naturally for friends and relatives, while Mr. and Mrs. is the safe choice for a client or an older relative who likes tradition. A couple with different last names gets both full names joined by and, on one line if they fit or on two lines above the street address if they don't. The same plural rule applies when you sign the card or write your own return address as The Garcias or The Garcia Family.

Printing labels or envelopes for a long list

Writing fifty envelopes by hand takes an evening, and next December you'd write the same list again. If you keep the addresses in a spreadsheet instead, OpenLabelMaker prints one address label or one envelope per row, so the job shrinks to peeling labels and adding stamps. It doesn't sell stamps or print postage, so those still come from USPS. The steps for a sheet of labels look like this:

1. Put your addresses in a spreadsheet, one household per row, and type the name line exactly as it should appear, for example The Martinez Family or Mary Lopez and John Smith.
2. Open the label editor with the Print Christmas card labels button on this page and choose your sheet, for example a US Letter sheet with 30 labels in the Avery® 5160 size.
3. Design one label the way you like it, for example in a script font such as Great Vibes, and every address in the list will use that layout.
4. Import the list as an Excel file, a CSV or a Google Sheets export. Printing a whole list this way is called mail merge, and it needs a free account. Free accounts have a monthly limit, and Pro is unlimited.
5. Print one page on plain paper first and hold it against a label sheet to check that the addresses line up, then print the real sheets.

OpenLabelMaker can also print the address straight onto A7 or A2 envelopes instead of labels, which saves the peeling. Most home printers can feed envelopes that size, but printers differ, so print a single envelope before you load the whole stack. For more on getting the spreadsheet ready, see the guide to printing address labels from Excel.