2026 First-Class Forever Stamps,Figures of the American Revolution: John Jay

US 6068n
2026 John Jay

• One of 25 people commemorated for helping America become independent
• Part of 250th anniversary celebrations

Stamp Category: Commemorative
Set: Figures of the American Revolution
Value: 78¢, First Class Mail Rate
First Day of Issue: April 10, 2026
First Day City: Washington, DC
Quantity Issued: 18,125,000 stamps (725,000 panes)
Printed by: Banknote Corporation of America
Printing Method: Offset, Flexographic
Format: Pane of 25

Why the stamp was issued: This stamp is part of a pane of 25 stamps issued to commemorate early Americans who helped in the country’s fight for independence.

About the stamp design: USPS art director, Ethel Kessler, designed the pane using original artwork by 13 artists.

First Day City: The dedication ceremony took place at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington.
An additional dedication took place on May 29 during the Boston 2026 stamp show.

About the Figures of the American Revolution set: Revolutions are not made by one kind of person. They are made by anyone willing to act — the general and the spy, the writer and the diplomat, the minister and the war chief, the woman at her writing desk and the enslaved man behind enemy lines. When the American Revolution demanded courage, it found it in unexpected places and in people history did not always remember.
Consider who is here: A Seneca war chief who made an impossible choice to protect his people. An enslaved man who infiltrated the British camp and helped win the war at Yorktown. A woman who heard the words “all men are created equal” and walked into a courtroom to demand they apply to her. A Caribbean orphan who rose from nothing to become indispensable. A Spanish governor who never lost a battle. A Polish military engineer who crossed an ocean to fight for a country that wasn’t his own. A Quaker who set aside his faith’s most sacred principle and picked up a musket. Together these 25 figures tell a fuller, truer story of what the Revolution actually was.
As the nation marked its 250th anniversary, this pane asked us to look beyond the famous moments and the celebrated names. Independence was not secured by one kind of courage or one kind of sacrifice. It was built by soldiers and statesmen, yes — but also by people who had every reason to doubt that the promise of freedom applied to them, and who fought for it anyway. That is the America these 25 figures helped forge.

History the stamp represents: In a Paris salon in 1783, three Americans sat down with the British and made independence official. John Jay was one of them. As one of America’s lead negotiators of the Treaty of Paris, he helped secure the terms that formally ended the Revolutionary War and established the United States as a sovereign nation. It was the culmination of a career spent building something entirely new.
Jay had already served as president of the Continental Congress, presiding over the fragile American government before the Constitution existed. He co-wrote the Federalist Papers, making the intellectual case for ratification. But his most daring moment came during the Paris negotiations. Suspicious that France might broker a deal that favored their own interests over America’s, Jay went directly to the British without telling his French allies. The gamble paid off. The final treaty was far more favorable to America than it might otherwise have been.
After the war, George Washington appointed Jay as the first chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. He had helped win the Revolution, written its intellectual defense, and now he would help build the institution that would interpret its principles for generations. Few founders touched as many pillars of the republic as John Jay.