2026 New issue programmes.
🇬🇧 Royal Mail -
Royal Mail has now revealed most of the remaining new issues for 2026.
The subjects of two issues have still not been revealed. The Commonwealth Games are to be hosted between 23 July and 2 August and there appears to be no issue to celebrate the Games. This will be the first Commonwealth Games to be hosted in the United Kingdom not to be marked by a Royal Mail stamp issue. This appears to be a remarkably random collection of subjects and there seems to be little of significance to justify the vast amounts of money which doubtlessly will need to be paid by one-of-everything collectors (if there are any such creatures still in existence). Depressing. I’m not really all that interested to know what the unidentified issues are. Ho hum.
New issues -
🇮🇳 India Post -
16 April 2026 - Commemoration of Pandit Chatur Lal, musician - 1 stamp. Rating:-***.
So much to dislike about the Royal Mail calendar, with even the ostensibly laudable Remembrance issue serving only to provoke the question: why this year?
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing particularly notable about 2026 (in terms of past Wars, or the fallen of those conflicts), and the cynic in me wonders whether it is either a desperate attempt to fill in the calendar post-Christmas (I still fear another issue will be squeezed into early December) or a precursor to shoehorning in a comparable issue every year from now on - or both!
I imagine the annual Collectors sheet will be a regular December event until everyone completely stops collecting Royal Mail stamps. Geeselaying golden eggs have limited life spans.
ReplyDeleteI understand that sometimes a post office might want to issue a few generic issues - it would be impossible to find an anniversary that would line up with Moths (though the Royal Entomology Society celebrates its bicentenary in 2033). But I take issue with every issue now having eight to ten stamps, and many of them have a miniature sheet and a collectors sheet. The only saving grace is that most are 1st and 2nd class stamps now, but even then its ridiculous gouging.
ReplyDeleteFingers crossed that "Pets" will be a more varied issue than just collating 5 cat stamps and 5 dog stamps, but I wouldn't be surprised if a dearth of ambition furnishes us with just that!
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