USPS Plans Mail, Parcel Price Increase for Holidays

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is seeking to temporarily raise prices on some of its offerings for the 2026 holiday season.

The higher peak-season prices will affect Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, USPS Ground Advantage, and Parcel Select services for both retail and commercial domestic parcels, the agency said in an Aug. 25 statement.

“This temporary price adjustment is to help cover extra handling costs to ensure a successful peak season,” USPS said.

The agency has filed a notice with the Postal Regulatory Commission regarding the price updates. If favorably reviewed by the commission, the new higher rates will take effect on Oct. 4 and remain in place until Jan. 17, 2027.

The temporary price changes will help USPS achieve its public service mission in a “cost-effective and financially sustainable manner” in the long term, the agency said.

The planned rate increases for retail customers are higher than USPS’s proposed rates for the 2025 holiday shipping season.

For instance, the prices of retail Priority Mail and USPS Ground Advantage services for Zones 1–4 for the upcoming holiday season are proposed to increase by $0.50 to $3.90, depending on weight. This is higher than the $0.40–$3 increases proposed before last year’s holiday season.

This year’s price increase proposal comes after the USPS raised the price of its First-Class Mail Forever stamps from 78 to 82 cents in July, a move that had attracted criticism.

During a June 24 testimony before a Senate committee, USPS Postmaster General David P. Steiner said that the postal service needs to “look for higher prices on both our package and mail products.”

At 78 cents, the U.S. First-Class stamp has the lowest price in the industrialized world, Steiner said.

The postmaster general pointed to France, where a similar stamp costs almost $3, and in England, where the price is $2.50. Moreover, in these countries, letters only have to travel about 600 miles, which is less than the distance across Texas, according to Steiner.

“We deliver from the tip of Puerto Rico to the tip of Alaska for 78 cents. That’s a distance of 5,000 miles,” Steiner said.

“So, we sell the stamp at less than half the cost to travel over eight times farther. If we were to change the stamp price to 90 to 95 cents, which is still less than half of the cost of most foreign posts, that would largely solve our controllable loss.”

In a July 9 statement, Keep US Posted, a nonprofit advocacy group, criticized the July stamp price hike while raising concerns about USPS’s financial situation and practices.

The group called on lawmakers to ensure USPS’s status quo of raising prices while cutting down on services does not continue.

Kevin Yoder, the group’s executive director, said in the statement that when USPS unveiled its Delivering for America in 2021, the postmaster general at the time projected the postal service would break even by fiscal year 2023 through measures such as frequent postal rate increases and operational service cuts. The plan aimed to boost the postal service’s financial and operational efficiency.

However, USPS has lost more than $30 billion since then, Yoder said, calling for the agency to be placed under stronger oversight by the Postal Regulatory Commission and for limiting postal price increases to an inflation-based cap.

During Aug. 7 remarks at the USPS Board of Governors meeting, Steiner credited the rise in mail prices for an increase in revenue despite declining volumes. This dynamic has been true for 14 out of 16 quarters, according to the Postmaster General.

“Obviously, we would like to both grow volumes and grow revenue, but if we can only do one, we want to do it in a way that maximizes total revenue. That is what all companies do—from airlines to grocery stores, they apply revenue management principles to maximize profitability,” Steiner said.