The Postal Service is raising the price of every domestic shipping product it sells by 6.0 percent for the fifteen weeks that cover the holidays, and rolling them back on 17 January
Six percent, four times over.
The Governors of the Postal Service have set time-limited prices for the whole of its domestic shipping range, and the same figure attaches to all of it. Priority Mail Express rises 6.0 percent. Priority Mail rises 6.0 percent. USPS Ground Advantage rises 6.0 percent. Parcel Select rises 6.0 percent overall, the only one of the four where the notice says the increase is allocated differently across weight classes.
Retail and commercial customers get the same treatment. Each of the first three products carries a 6.0 percent average rise on the retail side and a 6.0 percent average rise on the commercial side, and the existing structure of zoned retail and commercial categories is kept.
The dates are the part to diary
The new prices take effect at midnight central time on 4 October 2026. They are rolled back to approved levels at midnight central time on 17 January 2027, unless the Governors act again. That is roughly fifteen weeks of higher prices, covering the whole of the fourth quarter and the first fortnight of January.
Nothing else moves. The notice states that no price changes are being made to Special Services or to international competitive products.
What the Governors had to find before they could do it
Competitive products are the half of the Postal Service that competes with private carriers, and the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 puts three tests on their prices. Each product must cover its own attributable costs. The group must not be subsidised by the monopoly products. And collectively the group must contribute a minimum share of the institution's overheads, set at 8.1 percent by regulation.
The decision states that the new prices satisfy all three. It also states that the material supporting that finding is in a nonpublic annex filed under seal, which is why this item can report the finding and not the arithmetic behind it.
The paper trail
Governors' Decision No. 26-7 was made on 19 August. The Secretary of the Board of Governors certified five days later that a majority of the Governors then holding office had voted for it. The decision is signed by Amber F. McReynolds as Chair. It reached public inspection at the Federal Register at 08:45 on Thursday morning and is scheduled to publish on Friday.
The actual price charts are not in it. The notice points to the draft Mail Classification Schedule sections attached to the decision, and to the Postal Regulatory Commission, for the numbers a shipper would pay.
