Royal Mail Stamp Programme for 2025

The Royal Mail stamp programme for 2025 can now be published and all those who contributed to our competition can now see how accurate their predictions were.  (Answer - not very!  Four readers sent in lists which contained 3 of the subjects on the list (including Christmas so really only two), and one of those had a suggestion which may be a third.

In fact some subjects not included in the list had more or as many supporters, with Jane Austen having 4. Nobody got the two Music Legends correct, and only one person suggested the right TV programme, although two others were also suggested.  One subject was suggested by 7 readers and is included in the programme.  (More details below.)

The subjects as listed below are as Royal Mail provided them to us in autumn 2024,, updated in spring 2025.  I have added (in brackets) associated anniversaries which may or may not be the reason behind the issue.

This year fewer of the stamp issues are media/entertainment related, leaving more (including Christmas) more directly relevant.

This programme should be made public at the same time as the Vicar of Dibley stamps which are on a separate post. 

So this year we have two UK television programmes and another Music Giants - an Australian.  There are some very obvious anniversaries, although whether the anniversaries will be specified on the stamps remains to be seen.  

Many people think that Monopoly is a British invention because the original UK version was produced by John Waddington, but that was under licence from US toy and gamemaker Parker Brothers.  But it's hard to see the Peanuts link with the UK.   

But as can be seen from the previous British stamps shown, many of the topics have already been covered in greater or lesser detail in the past. 

Other subjects which might have been covered, and which were suggested by readers ...

- The 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen (yes, she's appeared before, but this is a worthy anniversary.)

- The Centenary of John Logie Baird's first demonstrations of  Television.

- The Women's Rugby World Cup and the Snooker World Cup.

- Television soap EastEnders, and sitcom Fawlty Towers - 40th anniversary of first broadcasts.

- under Music Giants, the following were suggested: Oasis, Bob Marley, Kate Bush, George Michael, Bay City Rollers.

- thematic suggestions included Art Deco Buildings, Coins, Sports Cars, Reintroduced Species, Small Pets, the Anglo-Saxons, Reptiles. (Sorry if I missed any!)

I'm sure there will be a significant number of Prestige Stamp Books and Collector Sheets.  If you are still buying everything, it will be an even more expensive year.  I'll do my best to continue to provide you with all the information I can.

PRIZE TIME - one person's name features in two issues this year.  The name is the same, the person is different.

When you spot it, email me with your name and address - don't leave the answer as a comment - and  I'll send some philatelic prize which has not yet been decided!

14th January	The Vicar of Dibley, television situation comedy (30 years)
30th January (Thanks John H)	The Royal Armouries
18th February	Music Giants - AC/DC (Australian band founded by two Scots)
11th March	Garden Wildlife
27 March 15th April Updated 23 January	British Myths & Legends
Also 27 March	Airmail definitives
1st May (Yes, this means no stamps in April.)	Valour and Victory Stories of the Second World War; overprinted sheet for Europhilex 2025
22nd May	The Chronicles of Narnia  (75 years since the first book by C S Lewis was published.) I had a report today, 6 May, of somebody being offered the MS in a post office - and buying it of course!
12th June	Royal Observatory at Greenwich - 350th Anniversary of Founding
3rd July	Fungi
24th July	Peanuts
14th August	Monty Python (television series 1969-74 - and films)
11th September	Ducks
25th September	Steam Locomotives - 200th anniversary of the Stockton - Darlington Railway
16th October	Monopoly (nobody saw that one coming!)
4th November	Christmas
27th November (Updated 26 June)	The stamps of Queen Victoria (WHY?  QV died in January 1901 so the obvious time to mark the 125th anniversary would be in 2026.)

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Music is the Spice of life: Music Giants IX, The Spice Girls - 11 January 2024

Royal Mail start the new year yet again with a Music Giants issue, this time for"the biggest girl group of all time, the Spice Girls, on the 30th anniversary of their formation" (*). 

The Spice Girls are global superstars, feminist icons, cultural figureheads and one of the most successful British bands since The Beatles. Between 1996 and 1998, when Spicemania was at its peak, they dominated the airwaves and stormed charts around the world with their inspirational ‘Girl Power!’ ethos and catchy pop hits. They have sold over 100 million records worldwide and scored nine UK number one singles.

* Last year the New York Times ranked the Spice Girls only fourth behind Diana Ross and the Supremes, who had 12 number one hits in first place.

The issue consists - as usual - of a set of stamps and a miniature sheet. The 15 stamps in total are all 1st class, meaning a basic cost of £18.75.

The stamps.

Set of 10 x 1st class Spice Girls stamps issued 11 January 2024.

Miniature sheet of five x 1st class Spice Girls stamps issued 11 January 2024.

The sheet stamps consist of five showing each group member individually, and five group shots from "some of their most iconic live performances internationally and in the UK."

 

For details, see Acknowledgements below.

 

The miniature sheet shows each of the band members in an iconic group photo. 

 

 

Technical Details and acknowledgements

The 41 x 30 mm gummed stamps have been printed in lithography by International Security Printers in sheets of 50 in horizontal se-tenant strips of 5,  perforated 14.5 x 14. 

The 180 x 74 mm self-adhesive miniature sheet contains 26 x 36 mm stamps printed in lithography by International Security Printers perforated 14 x14.

Designed by Supple Studio.
Acknowledgements in stamp order: (1) Spice Girls performing at the BRIT Awards, 1997 © Shutterstock.com; Melanie Chisholm performing at the BRIT Awards, London, 1998 © Richard Young/Shutterstock.com; Spice Girls performing during the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games © Johannes Eisele/AFP/ Getty Images; Geri Halliwell performing at the BRIT Awards, London, 1997 © Dave Benett/Getty Images; Spice Girls performing in San Jose, California, 2007 © Matt Baron/Shutterstock. com; 

(2) Emma Bunton performing at Wembley Arena, London, 1998 © Pete Still/Redferns/Getty Images; Spice Girls performing in Istanbul, 1997 © 2024 Spice Girls; Victoria Beckham performing during The Return of the Spice Girls Tour at Madison Square Garden, New York City, 2008 © MJ Kim/Spice Girls LLP via Getty Images; Spice Girls performing in Dublin, 1998 © Dave Hogan/Getty Images; Melanie Brown performing at the BRIT Awards, London, 1997 © JMEnternational/Redferns/Getty Images. Under license to Bravado Merchandising. All rights reserved. © 2024 Spice Girls. 

MS: Spice Girls, photograph by Christophe Gstalder © Spice Girls/ Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection/Alamy Stock Photo. Under license to Bravado Merchandising. All rights reserved. © 2024 Spice Girls.

Products available

Set of 10 stamps, miniature sheet, first day covers (2), presentation pack, prestige stamp book (PSB), press sheet of 12 minitaure sheets (edition of 200), stamp cards, fan sheets (2), collectors sheets (2), gold stamp set, platinum mini-sheet, framed products, print, stamps & MS each in a special souvenir carrier, limited edition PSB.   

Prestige Stamp Book, price £23.70.

As expected the PSB contains all the stamps in the same form as they are otherwise available, plus a pane of King Charles III definitive stamps coded M23L MPIL, with labels showing stills from the videos 2 Become 1 and Viva Forever.  (Click on the images to enlarge.)

Front cover of regular book.

Back cover of regular book.

 

 

Front cover of Limited Edition book.

Limited Edition PSB has the same stamps but is has different covers and comes with a certificate of authenticity.  Limited to 1994 copies, price £49.99. 

Collectors sheets

One collectors sheet contains a full set of 10 stamps, the other two sets of stamps from the miniature sheet, both accompanied by pictorial labels of the group, price £13.70 each.  Both are self-adhesive making the 'sheet' stamps different to those issued in sheets.

Spice Girls Collectors sheet of 10 stamps and labels.

Spice Girls Collectors sheet of two sets of miniature sheet stamps, with labels.

Fan Sheets

1. containing two each of the 1997 Brit Award and Istanbul stamps. Size A4, litho with PVA gum. Edition of 5,000 - £7.00.

2. containing one each of the miniature sheet stamps.  Size 230 x 190 mm, litho self-adhesive, edition of 5,000 price £7.50.

As usual, the first issue of the year has garnered wide publicity in the general media. 

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Royal Mail stamp programme for 2024

The Royal Mail stamp programme for 2024 can now be published and all those who contributed to our competition can now see how accurate their predictions were.

As has been widely discussed already, The Spice Girls are up first (although not with the stamp shown alongside which was suggested by a reader a couple of years ago), with a second Music Giants issue, for The Who, in the autumn. 

The subjects as listed below are as Royal Mail provided them to us in autumn 2023.  I have added (in brackets) associated anniversaries which may or may not be the reason behind the issue.

This year only five of the five of the stamp issues is media/entertainment related, leaving 10 (including Christmas) more directly relevant.

This programme has been made public at the same time as the Spice Girls stamps which are on a separate post.

11th January	Music Giants IX: Spice Girls
1st February	Weather: 170th Anniversary of the Meteorological Office (but also Centenary of The Shipping Forecast)   §§§§
20th February	Vikings: 40 years since the opening of the Jorvik Centre in York.
12th March	Dinosaurs
? April	New Definitives for tariff change - possible, and likely to be airmail only
16th April	Centenary of Commemorative Stamps (British Empire Exhibition)
16th May	Peppa Pig (Children's TV animation first aired 2004)
6th June	Dogs §§§
20th June	Red Arrows 60th Anniversary
25th July	Dungeons and Dragons §§§
13th August	Tower of London
3rd September	Porridge (TV programme which first aired in 1974)
26th September	Spiders
17th October	Music Giants X: The Who §
5th November	Christmas
30th November	Sir Winston Churchill (150th Anniversary of Birth) §§§§§§§

The indicators § show how many competition participants predicted he particular issue/subject in some way.  Everybody included Christmas of course.

My first reaction was that the subjects looked more interesting than in many recent years.  It remains to be seen just why the Dinosaurs, Dogs, Spiders and Tower of London sets are included and any events or anniversaries that they are associated with.

Various Royal Houses were covered in the past, and 2017's Ancient Britain covered the pre-historic period, so The Vikings may be another in a series.  Similarly the Tower of London probably continues the Royal Palaces series.

Porridge is likely to be in similar style to Only Fools and Horses or Blackadder.

Time will tell; hopefully when the official announcement is made there will be more flesh on these bare bones.

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Music Giants IX - 11 January 2024

Readers who subscribe to Royal Mail's new issue service are starting to receive advance notices of charges to their accounts or cards.

Apparently Music Giants IX (not identified) will be issued on 11 January and includes PSB YB117 priced at £23.70 - which ought to mean more King Charles III definitives.

One reader reports his total bill, presumably for regular stamps, MS, PSB comes to £42.90!  

Will it be another one of these, as suggested by a reader last year?

More information will be provided here when we are permitted to release it - around a week before issue if past experience is anything to go by.

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New Music Giants set?

Reader PY has remarked that all the Music Giants sets so far have featured male artists or bands.  Even the original Album Covers set was predominantly male aristes.  So he has mocked-up these designs for a future issue.

The only problem I can see is that an issue like this would seem to be an add-on concession, a bit like the Womens Cricket World Cup issue tacked on to the England win MS.  All the previous issues had a set of stamps, a MS, a PSB and usually a retail booklet for a single artist or band.   So we have a set of eight different female artists in one set; still it's a start.

PY's chosen eight are Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield, Amy Winehouse, Annie Lennox, Cilla Black, The Spice Girls, Joan Armatrading and Bananarama.

Suggested Music Giants Female artists designs - Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield, Amy Winehouse, Annie Lennox, Cilla Black, The Spice Girls, Joan Armatrading and Bananarama

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Queen: Another startling perforation error.

Back in July I reported on a strange shift of rouletting and iridescent printing on the definitive

pane from the Music Giants IV: Queen prestige stamp book.  No others have been reported, but it would be expected that more exist, so I urge you to check your booklets.

Could anything be more surprising than that?  Well yes, and on a product that many collectors don't pay any attention to.


As well as the two Collector Sheets (aka Smilers or Generic) Royal Mail produced two 'Fan Sheets' one featuring four copies of the 'A Night at the Opera' stamp and the other the 'Album Covers Collection' featuring all eight gummed stamps in one sheet, not se-tenant, but individually separated.

Although not se-tenant, one would expect that these stamps would all be perforated in one strike of the perforator.  Whether web-printed and cut, or sheet-printed, the most efficient way of perforating is to have all the holes punched at once, just as would happen on a miniature sheet of se-tenant stamps.

So how to explain this:

Not immediately obvious from the front, it stands out when the sheet is turned over!  IF the perforations are all struck at once the only way this single error could occur is for the perforations for part of the sheet to be still under the perforator when the second strike occurs.  The perforations for the 'News of the World' stamp (the green one at the top right) would hit the lower left of the sheet - but even then, the perforations for the 'Night at the Opera' stamp to its left would clip the sheet, due to the gap between the stamps being less than the gap between the erroneous perforation and the edge of the sheet.

So has anybody any other suggestions?

This was first reported to me via Twitter, by @BetterPhilately who mostly covers the stamps of India and the USA on the blog http://www.betterphilately.com/   Take a look, and take a wider look on Twitter and other social media.

Although many readers of this blog collect only GB stamps - and many of them seem to collect only Machins - there's a philatelic world out there to explore, and you'd be surprised how much people are willing to share their collections and knowledge.

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Music GIants III - 3 September 2019

Royal Mail is issuing a set of stamps and Miniature Sheet to celebrate one of the UK’s greatest music legends on the 50th anniversary of his first album and as he continues his final tour – Farewell Yellow Brick Road. 

Total sales of Elton John’s records worldwide are estimated between £275m and £300m which makes him one of the biggest selling artists of all time. A re-written and re-recorded version of ‘Candle in the Wind’ released in 1997 remains the biggest-selling single since the charts began in the 1950s and he is the most successful artist of all time in the US charts after the Beatles and Elvis Presley.

Elton John has achieved 38 gold and 27 platinum albums and has been awarded 12 Ivor Novellos, 5 Grammys, 4 BRITS and an Oscar. He has also written the award-winning and much acclaimed soundtracks to the Lion King and Billy Eliot. In recognition of his contribution to music and for his charity work he was knighted in 1998, having been awarded a CBE two years previously.
   
The issue consists of a set of 8 stamps, 4 x 1st class and 4 x £1.55 (total £9), and a miniature sheet of four stamps (£4.50).  There will also be a retail booklet containing two of the 1st class stamps and 4 x 1st class definitives (£4.20).


 

1st class se-tenant strip - Honky Château, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Caribou, and Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy

£1.55 se-tenant strip - Sleeping with The Past, The One, Made in England, and Songs from The West Coast

The retail booklet contains the Yellow Brick Road and Captain Fantsatsic stamps; these will be self-adhesive and so have separate catalogue numbers from the gummed stamps shown above. The definitive stamps will be coded M19L MCIL, and the booklet is printed on SBP2.

 

Minisheet:  1st Class Madison Square Garden 2018, 1st Class Buckingham Palace 2012;

£1.55 Hammersmith Odeon 1973, £1.55 Dodger Stadium 1975.

Background Image Elton John Peacock based costume from 1974.

The album stamps in detail
1st Class Honky Château: Recorded in the Château d'Hérouville near Paris, Honky Château was Elton John’s breakthrough pop album, home to ‘Rocket Man’ – one of three songs he composed on the morning of the first day of recording.

1st Class Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: A double album that perhaps represents the artistic
pinnacle of Elton’s 1970s’ career, a teeming, eclectic song writing masterclass that features ‘Candle in The Wind’, ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’ and ‘Bennie and the Jets’.

1st Class Caribou: His fourth consecutive US number one album, Caribou, is best-known for ‘The Bitch Is Back’ and the epic ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’, but its most striking moment might be ‘Ticking’, the eerie saga of an armed siege in a bar.

1st Class Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy: A concept album on which lyricist Bernie Taupin recounts the early days of his and Elton’s career, complete with a vivid depiction of Elton’s 1968 suicide attempt, ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight’.

£1.55 Sleeping with The Past: The last album Elton John made before going into rehab was intended as a homage to the soul and R ‘n’ B music that had inspired him in the 1960s: in ‘Sacrifice’, it produced his first UK solo number one single.

£1.55 The One: The cover designed by Gianni Versace, its lyrics haunted by the unfolding AIDS
crisis and Elton’s battle with drug addiction, The One re-established the now clean and sober Elton John.

£1.55 Made in England: Largely recorded live in the studio, Made in England’s upbeat title track – a hit single in 1995 – masks the rest of the album’s mature mood, which features reflections on ageing both positive and negative.

£1.55 Songs from The West Coast: “Going backwards to go forwards”, as Elton put it, Songs from The West Coast returned to the warm sound of his early 1970s’ albums and offered his and Taupin’s strongest collection of songs in years. A latter-day triumph.

Designs and acknowledgements
Set: Royal Mail Group Ltd, based on an original design by Studio Dempsey Photography of album covers by John Ross; all album covers © Mercury Records Limited


MS: Royal Mail Group Ltd.  Background image – Elton John performing in 1974 © Sam Emerson,
courtesy of Rocket Entertainment; Christmas show at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, 1973 © Michael Putland/Getty Images; Dodger Stadium concert, Los Angeles, 1975 © Terry O’Neill/Iconic Images; Diamond Jubilee Concert at Buckingham Palace, London, 2012 © Dan Kitwood/Staff/Getty Images; Madison Square Garden concert, New York, 2018 by Ben Gibson © HST Global

Technical details
Printed by International Security Printers, size 38mm(w) x 31mm(h) in sheets of 48, 12 se-tenant strips of four per sheet.  Litho, PVA Gummed, Perforations 14 x 14

Miniature Sheet Size 146mm x 74mm, with stamps 41mm(w) x 30mm(h), perforated 14.5 x 14.


Postmarking arrangements.
Music Giants III Stamp Issue – Postmarking Extension
In order to give customers sufficient time to prepare their covers and postcards as well as submit sponsored postmark requests Royal Mail is extending the availability of all postmarks relating to the Music Giants III stamp issue by 28 days from the First Day of Issue (3 September). All items requiring a Music Giants IIII related postmark should be received by Royal Mail Special Handstamp Centres by 8th October. 

Any sponsored postmarks received after publication of this [September] Postmark Bulletin will appear in the October edition and customers will be able to have these postmarks applied to covers up to and including 5th November.

Official first day Postmarks.

Other products
Presentation pack with set and MS (£14.30); two first day covers; Stamp Cards; Press sheet of 15 miniature sheets, an edition limited to only 300 and priced at  £74.25.

Products not aimed at the philatelic market include 'Fan sheets' containing four identical stamps in a surround of the same design.  (The similar David Bowie sheets contained five stamps.)  The stamps are "the same as those in the ordinary set" according to Royal Mail and whether the phosphor is different we don't know.  But these sheets do enable se-tenant horizontal pairs and strips of the designs.

 

There are also many other souvenirs and framed print and stamp combinations all of which are on Royal Mail's website. 

Fan sheets will be available for Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy stamps, with a third one having all 8 stamps in the set against a montage of the album covers.   The individual sheets are £7.50 and the sheet showing the set is £10.20 (the last is a small mark-up on face value but still not guaranteed to get a full catalogue listing).

As usual, we shall not be stocking these.

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