The U.S. stamp price went up again.

This PieterPost report is a 2026 snapshot of what a basic domestic stamp costs around the world. It compares current national postal rates across 29 countries, then adds nominal U.S. dollar conversions, PPP-adjusted comparisons, CPI context, and source notes for rows where the postal product or public data changed.

The U.S. finding is why the report matters right now. On July 12, 2026, the First-Class Forever stamp reached 82¢. That puts the current price 30.2% above its mid-2023 level, a sharp move for households, nonprofits, small businesses, and anyone who still relies on physical mail.

Internationally, the picture is different. Even after the July 12 increase, the U.S. remains one of the cheaper nominal stamp markets in the sample. The report is not a defense of higher prices. It is a measurement of where the U.S. now sits in a postal market where many countries have raised prices, changed letter products, or moved away from letters faster than Americans may realize.

A four-cent increase feels small until it becomes the latest step in a much longer climb. The Forever stamp was 63¢ in June 2023 and became 82¢ on July 12, 2026. For people who still mail bills, cards, invitations, official forms, letters to family, or letters to people in prison, that increase is real.

International rankings change the frame. In the 2026 nominal-price table, the U.S. remains below Canada, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and several other countries. Some of those countries are not slightly higher. The U.K. is roughly three times the U.S. price in nominal dollar terms. Finland and Estonia are even higher in the current data.

That does not make 82¢ "nothing." It makes 82¢ a benchmark. The U.S. is not unusual because the stamp is expensive; it is unusual because the stamp is still relatively cheap while the system behind it is under pressure.

A 2026 stamp-price comparison is harder than a simple tariff table. Some countries raised domestic-letter prices sharply, some changed products, and some postal systems made priority letters harder to compare. This report keeps the published country set to markets with a current comparable domestic-letter row.

The point of the report is to show where the comparison works, where the current public data is strong enough to compare, and what the U.S. looks like inside the messier 2026 postal market.

For a U.S. household, 82¢ is more expensive than it used to be. For someone who buys a sheet of stamps once in a while, the difference may be small. For nonprofits, small businesses, people who send regular mail, and families who rely on letters, repeated increases add up.

Internationally, though, 82¢ is still low. That is the conclusion the data keeps coming back to: the U.S. stamp has become more expensive quickly, but the U.S. has not become an expensive stamp country. The bigger story is that the economics of letters are getting harder almost everywhere.

A stamp is a tiny object, but it sits on top of a very large system: delivery routes, labor, fuel, sorting plants, rural coverage, legal obligations, and a public expectation that the mail should still reach everyone. That is why the 82¢ price matters: not because it proves the U.S. stamp is overpriced, but because it shows how much strain can sit behind one of the cheapest stamps in the comparison.