2026 First-Class Forever Stamp,Figures of the American Revolution: Thomas Jefferson

US 6068o
2026 Thomas Jefferson

• 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 the summer of 1776, a 33-year-old Virginia lawyer sat down and wrote the words that would define a nation. Thomas Jefferson didn’t just draft a declaration of independence - he articulated a philosophy of human freedom that had never been stated so clearly or so boldly. “All men are created equal.” “They are endowed with unalienable rights.” “Governments derive their power from the consent of the governed.” In a few hundred words, Jefferson changed the way the world thought about power.
He brought the same convictions to Virginia, serving as its wartime governor from 1779 to 1781 as British forces pressed deep into the state. It was a difficult tenure in impossible circumstances, yet Jefferson never wavered in his belief that the American experiment was worth defending. After the war he continued shaping the young republic as a diplomat, secretary of state, and eventually its third president.
The words Jefferson put on paper in 1776 became something larger than the man who wrote them. They became a standard - one that challenged every generation that followed to close the distance between America’s ideals and its actions. Few documents in human history have carried that kind of weight. This stamp honors the man behind those historic words.