PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh’s favorite neighbor, Mister Rogers, has won the United States Postal Service’s Stamp Encore Contest.
Last year, USPS invited the public to vote on its favorite stamp pane to be reprinted as part of its 250th anniversary celebration. The contest features 25 stamp panes selected from some of the Postal Service’s bestselling and most popular in recent years.
Over 500,000 votes were cast over 10 weeks, and it was revealed on Sunday at the Boston 2026 World Expo that the Mister Rogers’ stamp from 2018 came out on top, earning 40,000 more votes than the runner-up.
The reissued stamp and a new four-image souvenir sheet highlighting characters from “The Neighborhood of Make-Believe” will be available at Post Office locations nationwide and online starting June 1.
“When we issued the Mister Rogers stamp in 2018, we ordered a print run of some 12 million. That may sound like a lot, but Mister Rogers really took us by surprise,” said Isaac Cronkhite, the Postal Service’s chief processing and distribution officer and executive vice president. “Within just a few weeks, the stamps honoring this humble, softspoken man had sold out completely.”
Western Pennsylvania, where Rogers was born and began creating children’s programming, may have had a large role in the sellout. The Pittsburgh area has long rallied around him, as highlighted when the stamp competition began, and the city campaigned hard for its comeback.
“Fred Rogers considered the space between the television set and a viewer to be ‘holy ground,’” said Emma Lee, Director of the Fred Rogers Institute. “The mail children sent to Mister Rogers, and his letters back, became an essential extension of that sacred connection. Reissuing this stamp beautifully honors the enduring ties he built with his television friends.”
The Mister Rogers stamps are being issued as Forever stamps in a pane of 20. The souvenir sheet is being issued as Forever stamps in a pane of four. The stamps will always be equal in value to the current First-Class Mail 1-ounce rate.
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