Christmas is the busiest shipping period of the year for Irish online sellers. From mid November to the third week of December, most shops post more parcels than in the previous three months combined, and every one of them is working back from a posting deadline. This page tracks both halves of the job: the An Post posting dates for each destination, and the preparation that keeps December orderly.
The dates decide when your shop stops promising pre-Christmas delivery. The preparation decides how those final weeks feel. Most of it comes down to removing repeated manual work before the volume arrives: if labels are created in batches rather than one at a time, a fifty-order day is a printing job, not an evening.
An Post typically announces the official dates in the autumn. Until then, last year's recommended latest posting dates (Christmas 2025) are the best planning guide. We will update this table the day the 2026 dates are published.
| Destination | Standard letters | Standard parcels |
|---|---|---|
| Ireland | 22 December | 16 December |
| Northern Ireland | 19 December | 16 December |
| Great Britain | 18 December | 16 December |
| Rest of Europe | 18 December | 12 December |
| USA | 10 December | 4 December |
| Rest of the world | 4 December | 4 December |
Source: An Post recommended latest posting dates, Christmas 2025. Express and registered services run later for most destinations; check the specific service before promising a delivery date.
The shops that have a calm December do the boring work in October and November. Six jobs cover most of it.
Your shop needs time to pick, pack and post, so your last-order date sits a day or three ahead of the posting deadline, not on it.
Save the weights and dimensions while things are quiet. In December a label for a known product takes seconds instead of a trip to the scales.
One label at a time is fine in March and painful in December. Upload orders as a CSV and print the whole run in one sitting.
Boxes, mailers, tape and label rolls run short everywhere in December. An emergency packaging run costs a morning you will not have.
A visible cut-off on the homepage and product pages answers the arrival question before it is asked, and cuts the December message pile.
A share of December orders comes back in the new year. Decide the returns window and process now so January runs on a policy, not on case-by-case emails.
Longer reads on the seasonal details: deadlines, customs, packaging and the December workflow.
Prepare an Irish online shop for the Christmas rush with saved parcel data, stocked packaging, batch labels, and a clear posting workflow before December orders build.
Plan Christmas stock ordering backwards from An Post’s final posting date. Set supplier, dispatch and reorder points before the rush exposes gaps.
An Post has not published its Christmas 2026 posting dates yet. Here are the official 2025 deadlines, which the 2026 dates will land within days of, plus the mid-season change that caught sellers out last year.
An Post usually publishes the official schedule in the autumn, a few weeks before the first deadlines. This page is updated the same day the 2026 dates appear. Until then, the Christmas 2025 dates in the table above are the planning guide; the new dates normally land within a few days of them because the schedule follows the same working-day pattern each year.
An Post sets separate dates for standard letters and standard parcels, and the parcel date is the earlier of the two for every destination. In 2025 the gap within Ireland was six days: 16 December for parcels against 22 December for letters and cards. If you sell physical goods, the parcel column is the one to plan around.
Yes. An Post's date is the day the parcel must be in the post, not the day the order can land in your inbox. Give yourself room for picking, packing, printing and the trip to the post office. Most small shops close orders one to three days before the posting date, earlier again around a busy weekend.
Tell the buyer plainly, at checkout and in the dispatch email, that the order ships on time but is not guaranteed to arrive before Christmas. Offering an Express upgrade is one option, since Express runs to later dates for most destinations. Many buyers will happily order for January delivery when the dates are stated clearly.
Often, yes. Express services run to later posting dates than standard for most destinations, carry tracking, and give a delivery estimate you can pass on to the buyer. The trade-off is cost per parcel, so the practical approach is to switch to Express for the final days before the deadline rather than for the whole month.
Buy discounted An Post labels online, print a whole batch from a CSV, and drop the parcels at any post office with nothing to pay at the counter. Your first three labels are free.