On August 3, 2025, Arab countries join to celebrate the Arab Postal Day with a stamp showing an identical design ‘Towards more innovative postal services’. So far, this issue involves Algeria (August 3), Iraq (August 3), Tunisia (August 3), and United Arab Emirates (August 3). More countries will probably be added (Information provided by Mohamed Achour Ali Ahmed, Algeriaand Kenneth Sequeira, Singapore).
Additionally to earlier information related to the 80th anniversary of Arab League [T20250322], Kenneth Sequeira (Singapore) informed us that Sudan issued three stamps with three different denominations, not a single one as previously announced.
In the meantime, Qatar became also another country to be added to this series. The stamp was issued on June 15, 2025. There are still some chances that additional Arab countries will have to be added to this series.
Kenneth Sequeira (Singapore) provided the first illustrations of the stamps and miniature sheets issued by the Sultanate of Oman and the Republic of Singapore celebrating their relationship established on February 21, 1985. The stamp features Muscat Street in Singapore’s Kampong Glam district, reflecting both Singapore’s heritage and its connection with Oman, through architecture and wall paintings. The stamps and souvenir sheets were released on February 21, 2025.
In the meantime, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania issued similar stamps related to the integration of the Baltic States to the European electricity network. These countries disconnected their electricity grids from the old Soviet-era system (BRELL), which linked them to Russia and Belarus, and synchronized it with the European grid (ENTSO-E) on February 9, 2025. The project involved building new infrastructure, upgrading power lines, and installing synchronous condensers to stabilize the grid. The stamps were issued on March 7, 2025. The three stamps are not identical, but very similar, created by the same designer and considered as twin stamps of type [T3].
Kenneth Sequeira (Singapore) provided a series of information about new issues to be released during the year 2025. In particular, Indonesia made a series of announcements of joint issues related to diplomatic relationship with Russia (February, 2025), China PR (April), Serbia (August), and Bosnia Herzegovina (September or October 3). Knowing the broad definition by Indonesian post for joint issue, we will have to wait for announcements and even release of stamps from the partner countries before confirming existence of these issues. In particular, we are already missing information about the supposed to be released February issue with Russia (no information in the Russian philatelic program).
A Portugal – India diplomatic relations joint issue was also announced to be released on April 7, 2025. On the other hand, the long awaited UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage joint issue between Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan, telling tradition of Nasreddin Hodja anecdotes, is finally cancelled, without explanations. By beginning of March 2025, the 50th anniversary of the women’s day was also celebrated. Some countries (Algeria, China, Malaysia, Thailand, …) issued stamps at this occasion and others will probably do, but there is no joint character with all these stamps.
We are still missing information about Qatar stamps that could have been issued since January 31, 2025 in association with the (announced as joint issue) stamp from Argentina. Any help is welcome.
The new catalogue of Joint Stamp Issues 2025 is now on line with the section of the stamps issued during the year 2024 fully updated. In order to keep an average of about 100-130 pages per volume facilitating a quick downloading, the year 2024 needed to be separared from the 2022-2023 period (Volume XV) and a new volume numbered XVI, containing years 2024-2025 was created.
This new updated catalogue, the 2025 version in 16 volumes, has now reached 1,900 pages. It contains over 2,280 entries among which more than 1,580 can be considered as true joint issues (unique, se-tenant, twin, concerted or parallel). It describes in total more than 16,100 items, and it is illustrated with above 8,900 pictures, providing also more than 35,100 quotations. This upgrade allowed also to make a comparison of the evolution of the number of issues of joint stamps for statistical purpose, which leads to a graph looking as follow:
It appears that after a strong progression over the years 1980-2010, the number of new yearly issues reached a kind of plateau over the past 15 years, with an average of 40 issues per year. The progression affected only the twin joint issues while the number of parallel/concerted issues remained stable over the past 50 years. However, the number of different products for each issue such as additional souvenir sheets, booklets, miniature sheets or mixed cancelled products, or the number of total stamps per issue did progress as well. In parallel, we have also to observe that the number of abusive joint issues (issues involving a high number of countries not fully controlled by the local postal administrations, but printed centrally) has increased. We will still continue to identify those issues separately, and even if we continue to have them described in the catalogue for the sake of completeness (gray color and italics characters), it will remain up to the individual collectors to decide if they want to include and purchase them. Typically, these stamps will not gain value over time, will be difficult to resell and are usually not accepted in exhibitions.
Joint issues are a mirror of the political state of the world. The increasing number of conflict situations is not in favor of a progression of the number of joint issues. Several planned issues were cancelled during the past five years, due to political concerns. My wish for the next year(s) is to be able to report soon a first joint issue e.g., involving Israel and Iran, North and South Korea or Ukraine and Russia, which would become the best sign of a progression toward world peace.
Among the major improvements, note that at least 25 new items describing mixed FDCs have been added over the period 2021-2024. We own a huge thank to Jaap Sarelse (The Netherlands) for his great work and time spent over the past 30 years in providing this information, finding the items and even trying to create such mixed products whenever possible. The existence of mixed first day cancelled products remains the ultimate proof of the joint character as both postal administrations must have agreed for the production and existence of such items.
On top of the additions of new 2024 issues described in previous blog pages, one has to note the following:
On September 14, 2024, Bangladesh re-issued an older stamp from 2001 with a handstamp “DHAKAPEX”. This issue is now described in the catalogue under the original stamp heading [T20011009] together with all the other stamps of the same series. This gave the opportunity also to update the texts and images of these stamps in the catalogue as this entry was only partially illustrated. As much as 75 new images over three pages were introduced to illustrate this entry.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is celebrating during the year 2025, its 160th anniversary. The UPU did send on October 28, 2024 a circular to all its members, asking that if they want to commemorate this anniversary, they can use the new logo of the event. The way this letter is presented clearly shows that this is not a call for a joint issue. So, at this stage and in absence of further notice, stamps that will be produced during the year 2025 and bearing the below logo will not be considered as joint, as they are simply commemorative stamps based on individual initiatives.
On the contrary, the design of the 2026 PostEurop stamps to be issued at the occasion of the 70th anniversary of PostEurop, was released by beginning of January 2025. A common stamp will be used at this occasion, based on a contest that a Finnish group did win.
One has also to note a small modification regarding the December 20, 2021 issue involving Colombia and Mexico. The Mexican stamps were issued on December 20, 2021, but the Colombian stamp became only available on January 25, 2022. However, it appears that the Colombian FDC and the mixed FDC are still cancelled from December 20, 2021. This issue which was initailly considered as a Concerted one under the heading number C20211220 is now reported as the twin issue T20211220.
The same modification affected the stamps issued on October 16, 2023, involving Vietnam and India. Small amounts of Vietnam stamps became available at one post office at the original day of issue (April 28, 2023), but stamps were retrieved after sale of the first batch of 4,000 units. India announced three times the release of their stamps until they became eventually available on October 16, 2023. These delays led to consider initially this series as Concerted. However, the mixed FDC of this issue is cancelled with dates from October 16, 2023 for both countries and therefore these stamps are filed as twin [T20231016]. Covers with Vietnamese stamps cancelled before October 16, 2023 are rarities.
While the month of April 2024 remained relatively quiet in terms of new joint issues (Israel-Romania on April 17 and Italy San marino on April 20), the month of May saw some interesting releases which are now listed below.
May 9, 2024: This is the official date of this year’s PostEurop issue. The topic is related to ‘Underwater fauna and flora’. A large number of countries issued their stamp(s) on the anniversary date of May 9, but as the design and dates of issue are remaining within the hands of each postal administration, similarly to previous years, the 2024 issue is not considered as joint, on the contrary to last year. This series is just reported in the catalogue for information for collectors of Europa / Europa CEPT / PostEurop stamps. So far, 57 countries have already released their stamp(s) or have announced their participation. Information is missing only for Albania, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine [N20240509].
May 21, 2024: Morocco and Romania celebrate cultural relations between both countries through a pair of identical stamps related to folk art. This is a twin issue [T1] representing traditional costumes and ceramic or porcelain objects from the regions of Vâlcea and Horezu (Romania), or from Fez (Morocco) [T20240521].
May 21, 2024: The 150th anniversary of the birthday of Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) is celebrated by the Vatican State and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) through a twin issue representing the Italian inventor in front of dedicated equipment. Unfortunately, as the UPU does not recognize SMOM a an official postal administration, this issue remains described in the catalogue, but under the heading non-approved/twin issue [N/T1] [N20240521]. Each individual collector to decide if he/she wants to keep this issue in his/her collection.
May 26, 2024: The accession of Frederic X to the Danish throne is celebrated through joint souvenir sheets issued by Denmark, Faroe Islands and Greenland. Due to the direct link between these three postal administrations, this joint issue is considered as a Territorial twin issue [TD] and will be referenced as [D20240526]. The identical souvenir sheets with one stamp showing the portrait of King Frederic X were issued at the date of the anniversary of the King (born on May 26, 1968). King Frederic X is officially reigning since January 14, 2024.
May 31, 2024: as a last minute issue, we were informed that China PR and Malaysia have issued a joint pair of stamps at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the diplomatic relationship between both countries (Source: Adam Paish, UK). The stamps represent two local large trees (Pine and Merbau/malaka teak) from both countries.
The potential Mongolia – Switzerland joint issue expected at the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the diplomatic relationship between both countries resulted in a souvenir sheet issued unilaterally by Mongolia on May 20, 2024 (see https://montsame.mn/en/read/344262), so, not a joint issue.
The Tunisia – Russia joint issue initially scheduled for May 24, 2024 (Art – Painter Roubtzoff) is now postponed to September 9, 2024 (Russian philatelic program).
We are still missing information about the Indian stamps linked to the already announced Israel Purim souvenir sheet that was supposed to be released on May 7, 2024.
The catalogue Part 1 and Part 15 have been updated accordingly.
Joint Stamp Issues 
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