When Does the USPS Stamp Price Go Up? (Plus All USPS Rate Changes)

The short answer

USPS typically raises prices twice a year, in January and July. That cadence has held since the United States Postal Service shifted to a regular price-adjustment schedule in 2022 under the Delivering for America plan. USPS also files off-cycle adjustments between those rounds. The next change is July 12, 2026 — see the alert above.

Current USPS rates

Below are the current USPS first-class prices we have on file. Effective date and source link are shown so you can verify against USPS Notice 123.

Mail class	Price
Forever stamp (1 oz letter, retail)	$0.78
Metered letter (1 oz)	$0.74
Each additional ounce (letter)	$0.29
Postcard	$0.61
Large Envelope / Flat (1 oz)	$1.63
Each additional ounce (large envelope)	$0.27

Source: USPS Notice 123 (the official, authoritative price sheet — published by USPS Pricing & Classification).

How often do USPS rates change?

Roughly two to three times per year in recent practice:

• January — the traditional New Year rate adjustment, almost always present.
• July — added as a second annual round in 2022. Forever stamp increases tend to land in this round.
• Off-cycle — USPS occasionally files a mid-year adjustment with the Postal Regulatory Commission outside the Jan/Jul rounds.

Forever stamp price history (2007–today)

Effective date	Forever stamp	Notes
July 12, 2026	78¢ → 82¢	July round — Forever stamp rises to 82¢ (~4.8% across mailing services). Filed with the PRC Apr 9, 2026; pending approval.
April 26, 2026	No change to Forever stamp	USPS announced an 8 percent temporary price increase on Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, USPS Ground Advantage, and Parcel Select, effective April 26, 2026 through January 17, 2027, with no change to First-Class Stamps.
April 26, 2026	Forever stamp held at 78¢	Off-cycle update — Priority/Ground rates revised; Forever stamp held at 78¢
January 18, 2026	Forever stamp held at 78¢	Other classes adjusted; Forever stamp unchanged
July 13, 2025	Forever stamp held at 78¢	USPS filed notice of mailing services price changes to take effect July 13, 2025, including a 5-cent increase in First-Class Mail Forever stamps from 73 cents to 78 cents.
July 13, 2025	73¢ → 78¢	Forever stamp +5¢
October 6, 2024	No change to Forever stamp	USPS proposed temporary price increases for Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, and USPS Ground Advantage during the 2024 holiday shipping season.
July 14, 2024	No change to Forever stamp	USPS filed notice of proposed price changes for Parcel Select service, with an average 25-percent increase to take effect July 14, 2024.
July 14, 2024	68¢ → 73¢	July round — large 5¢ jump
January 21, 2024	Forever stamp held at 68¢	USPS proposes a 2-cent increase in First-Class Forever stamp prices from 66 cents to 68 cents, effective January 21, 2024.
January 21, 2024	66¢ → 68¢	January round
July 9, 2023	63¢ → 66¢	July round
January 22, 2023	Forever stamp held at 63¢	USPS announced a three-cent increase in First-Class Mail Forever stamp prices from 60 cents to 63 cents, effective January 22, 2023.
January 22, 2023	60¢ → 63¢	January round
July 10, 2022	58¢ → 60¢	July round — Forever stamp to 60¢
August 29, 2021	55¢ → 58¢	August off-cycle — Forever stamp to 58¢
January 27, 2019	50¢ → 55¢	January round — Forever stamp to 55¢
January 21, 2018	49¢ → 50¢	January round — Forever stamp to 50¢
January 22, 2017	47¢ → 49¢	January round — surcharge restored to 49¢
April 10, 2016	49¢ → 47¢	Rare decrease — exigent surcharge rolled back to 47¢
January 26, 2014	46¢ → 49¢	January round — included a temporary exigent surcharge
January 27, 2013	45¢ → 46¢	January round
January 22, 2012	44¢ → 45¢	January round
May 11, 2009	42¢ → 44¢	Spring increase
May 12, 2008	41¢ → 42¢	Spring increase
April 12, 2007	41¢	Forever stamp introduced — Liberty Bell, first sold at 41¢

Where to check for the next price change

Three authoritative places, in order of how directly they reflect what you'll actually pay at the post office:

1. USPS Notice 123 (Postal Explorer) — the official price list. Updated by USPS the moment new prices take effect. This is the page our pricing database reads from. If you want one bookmark, this is it.
2. USPS Newsroom — rate-change announcements typically appear here roughly 90 days before they take effect. USPS files the change with the Postal Regulatory Commission first, then posts a press release.
3. Postal Regulatory Commission daily docket — the formal regulatory filings. Earliest signal of upcoming rate changes, but denser to read. Search for "market-dominant" filings for letter/flat changes.

What is a Forever stamp?

A Forever stamp is a First-Class stamp with no price printed on it. It's always worth the current 1-ounce First-Class letter rate — today, 78¢ — no matter when you bought it. A Forever stamp purchased for 41¢ back in 2007 still mails a one-ounce letter today, with nothing to add.

That's exactly what makes it handy around a price change: buy before the increase and you lock in the lower price. With the July 12, 2026 increaseto 82¢ coming, the stamps you buy today at 78¢ will still cover a letter afterward — so stocking up now quietly saves the difference on every one. The catch: a Forever stamp only ever covers one ounce of First-Class, so heavier or oversized mail still needs extra postage — our how many stamps calculator works out the rest.

Why the Forever stamp exists

USPS issued its first Forever stamp — the Liberty Bell — on April 12, 2007, dedicating it at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The goal was refreshingly customer-friendly: end the scramble for one- and two-cent "make-up" stamps every time the letter rate ticked up.

Before it, USPS bridged rate changes with non-denominated "alphabet" stamps — the lettered "A" through "H" issues from 1978 to 1998, sold at the new rate while the change was under review. Borrowing an idea from the UK's "1st class" stamps, the Forever stamp replaced all of that with one promise: always equal to the current first-ounce price, no catch-up stamps required. It was an instant hit — 1.2 billion sold in the first few months — and by 2011 nearly every regular First-Class stamp USPS printed was a Forever stamp. The price history above traces it the whole way, from 41¢ to today.

Why USPS keeps raising prices — the real reasons

The headline you'll see in most coverage — "USPS hasn't turned a profit since 2006" — is technically true and almost completely misleading. It assumes USPS should turn a profit, which is a policy choice, not an economic law. Royal Mail, Canada Post, and Deutsche Post have all received various forms of government support over the years. The United States is the outlier in demanding that its post fund itself while imposing a universal-service obligation. The rate increases you keep seeing are largely the consequence of that mismatch.

USPS is also constitutionally authorized as a service (Article I, Section 8) — not chartered as a business. Treating it like one is what produces the never-ending headlines about losses. Three concrete forces actually drive the hikes:

1. A pre-funding mandate unique to USPS. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 required USPS to pre-fund 75 years of retiree health benefits within a single decade — roughly $5.5 billion a year. No other federal agency, no private company, and no other country's postal service has ever faced this requirement. It accounted for the bulk of the reported losses for more than fifteen years. The Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 finally repealed the mandate, but the "USPS loses money every year" narrative it manufactured stuck.
2. Mail volume collapsed; the network didn't. First-class mail peaked at 103 billion pieces in 2006 and sits at roughly 46 billion today. Email and online billing took the volume. The trucks, routes, post offices, and six-day-a-week delivery to every U.S. address are still there. Fixed costs don't scale down in proportion, so the cost per remaining piece keeps climbing. This is real economic pressure, not an accounting artifact.
3. Universal service is the strength; the funding model is the trap. Universal service isn't a constraint to work around — it's arguably the most valuable piece of public infrastructure in the country. Every U.S. address gets six-day-a-week delivery for the same 78¢, whether you're in Manhattan or remote Alaska. That universal reach is what gives Americans the freedom to live anywhere without geography becoming a barrier — to run a business, vote by mail, receive prescriptions, apply for a passport. FedEx and UPS don't do this; they cherry-pick the profitable routes and pay USPS to handle their rural last-mile deliveries (FedEx SmartPost, UPS SurePost). UPS and FedEx are businesses that pick their customers. USPS is infrastructure that serves everyone — and that's the feature, not the bug. The trap is the funding model laid on top of it: USPS is required to provide universal service, forbidden from closing unprofitable post offices without congressional review, capped on how fast it can raise rates, and denied taxpayer funding for operations — and then graded against private-sector profit metrics. When a private business loses money it cuts service. USPS, by design, cannot. Rate increases are essentially the only lever left, so the lever keeps getting pulled.

The Postal Regulatory Commission expanded USPS's rate-setting authority in 2020, allowing increases beyond inflation to recover for density loss and retirement obligations. That's the immediate reason the twice-yearly cadence began in 2022. The deeper reason, though, is structural: a public service held to private-business accounting. Until that contradiction is resolved at the policy level, the rate increases will keep coming.

How accurate is this page?

The current rates above are loaded server-side from our pricing database every time you load this page, which a daily job keeps in sync with the official USPS price sheet (Notice 123) — so the moment new prices take effect, this page shows them with no article rewrite. The upcoming-change alert and the history table are driven the same way: an automated monitor watches USPS announcements and records each one, so this page stays current on its own.

Spotted a price that looks wrong? Cross-check against USPS Notice 123 and let us know.