Australia Post stamp prices rise to $1.85 from 1 September 2026

Status: Active. Issued: 29 July 2026. Takes effect: 1 September 2026. Affects: anyone posting ordinary letters in Australia, and HotSnail customers who use domestic letter forwarding or return-to-sender.

The Australia Post stamp price increase is now locked in for 1 September 2026. The Basic Postage Rate -- the price of an ordinary small letter -- goes from $1.70 to $1.85, an increase of 8.8 per cent. Large letter rates rise by the same proportion. Concession and seasonal greeting card stamps are not changing at all.

This is a separate change from the annual domestic parcel and Express Post revisions that take effect each 1 July. The Basic Postage Rate is regulated differently, which is why it moves on its own timetable and needs a formal process before it can change.

What the new Australia Post stamp prices are

The reserved ordinary letter prices from 1 September 2026:

• Small letter (Basic Postage Rate): $1.70 rises to $1.85 -- up 15 cents, or 8.8 per cent.
• Large letter up to 125g: $3.40 rises to $3.70.
• Large letter 125g to 250g: $5.10 rises to $5.55.
• Concession stamps: no change. They stay at 60 cents each.
• Seasonal greeting card stamps: no change. They stay at 65 cents.

Two things worth noting alongside the headline number. First, the concession stamp allowance has been increased -- eligible concession card holders can now buy up to 75 concession rate stamps per year, up from 50, following a recommendation by the ACCC. Second, the Basic Postage Rate covers the regular delivery timetable only. Priority-timetable letters, Express Post and registered post add-ons are priced separately and are revised on their own schedule, so check the current figures on auspost.com.au/sending/postage-costs before budgeting for those.

Why the increase needed approval first

Australia Post cannot simply reprice a stamp. The reserved letter service is subject to a price notification process overseen by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and the Minister for Communications holds the final power to reject a proposed increase.

The sequence for this one:

1. Australia Post lodged a draft price notification with the ACCC in December 2025, proposing an 8.8 per cent rise from mid-2026.
2. The ACCC published a preliminary view not to object in late May 2026 and consulted publicly, with submissions closing on 22 June 2026.
3. The ACCC confirmed it would not oppose the increase. Its assessment found that even after the rise, Australia Post would still likely fall slightly short of recovering the efficient costs of delivering its reserved letter services.
4. With no ministerial rejection, the new prices apply from 1 September 2026.

The ACCC's role here is often misreported. It does not approve or set the price -- it assesses whether the proposed increase is justified against efficient costs and declines to object, or objects. The economics behind the decision are straightforward: letter volumes keep falling while the cost of delivering to every address in the country does not fall with them.

How much this actually costs a household

For most individuals, very little. The ACCC estimated the annual impact on an average household at roughly 75 cents -- a reflection of how few stamped letters a typical household sends in a year. The increase matters much more to organisations that still send letters in volume: government departments, utilities, insurers, super funds, banks and law firms.

That distinction is the reason this change is worth flagging to mail forwarding customers. You probably won't notice it as a sender. You may well notice it as a recipient, because the organisations sending you paper are now paying more to do it, and the long-term response to rising letter costs is to send fewer letters and push more correspondence to digital channels or to a portal you have to log in to and check.

What this means for HotSnail customers

HotSnail passes Australia Post carrier rates through at cost, so the stamp price increase touches some services and not others:

• Scanning is unaffected. Scan envelope, open and scan, rescan and shred are HotSnail-priced actions. They do not include a postage component, so no stamp increase flows through to them.
• Domestic letter forwarding rises. When we reseal and post paper correspondence to an Australian address as an ordinary letter or large letter, the new rate applies to anything dispatched on or after 1 September 2026.
• Return to sender rises. Items you mark for return are dispatched at the letter or parcel rate for their size, so the same date applies.
• Parcel and international forwarding are unchanged by this. Parcel Post, Express Post and international services are not part of the Basic Postage Rate. For domestic parcel figures see our Australia Post domestic parcel rate table for 2026.

In practical terms a single letter forward costs 15 cents more, and a large letter forward 30 to 45 cents more. Trivial per item. It adds up if you forward a dozen items a month, every month.

Four things to do before 1 September

1. Clear your pending forward queue. Log in to members.hotsnail.com.au and look at what you have been deferring. Anything dispatched before 1 September goes at the current rate. This is a small saving, but it costs nothing to act on.
2. Move read-only mail to scan. Statements, notices, newsletters and confirmations rarely need to arrive on paper. Switching those to scan-and-hold removes the postage cost entirely rather than repricing it. Our comparison of mail scanning versus mail forwarding works through when each option is the cheaper one.
3. Batch what genuinely has to be posted. Several letters consolidated into one forward is cheaper than several separate dispatches, because you pay one postage charge instead of several. Setting a monthly or fortnightly cadence for non-urgent physical mail is the single biggest lever on your forwarding costs.
4. Check what your senders are doing. Rising letter costs accelerate the shift to digital-only correspondence. If an organisation quietly stops posting and starts emailing, make sure the email address on that account is one you actually read.

The bigger trend behind the price rise

The stamp price increase is one part of a longer restructuring of Australia's letter network. Regular letter delivery has already moved to an every-second-day model in most metropolitan areas, which changed when mail arrives rather than whether it arrives -- we covered the practical consequences in our post on every-second-day letter delivery.

Put the two changes together and the direction is clear: letters cost more and move slower, while the volume of genuinely important paper mail -- ATO notices, ASIC documents, bank cards, court and legal correspondence, renewal notices with deadlines attached -- has not gone away.

Australia Post's price notification also flags indicative further increases in later financial years, subject to confirmation through the same process. Treat the 1 September 2026 rate as a step in an ongoing series rather than a one-off, and check the current figure on Australia Post's site rather than relying on a number you remember.

Where a virtual mailbox fits

If a rising stamp price is a meaningful cost to you, it usually means you are still moving a lot of paper. The alternative is not to move it. A virtual mailbox gives you a permanent Australian street address where mail is received, scanned and readable the same day, with physical forwarding reserved for the small proportion of items that genuinely need to be in your hands.

That model changes the arithmetic entirely: postage becomes an occasional cost instead of a per-item one, and it is unaffected by delivery timetable changes because you read the scan rather than wait for the envelope. If you are weighing this against a standard redirection, our comparison of Australia Post mail redirection versus a virtual mailbox sets out the differences, and mail forwarding for Australian expats covers the case where you are out of the country entirely.

Verify before you budget. Figures in this alert reflect Australia Post's published price notification and the ACCC's decision as at 29 July 2026. Confirm current prices at auspost.com.au pricing updates before relying on them.