Denmark Becomes First Country in Europe to End Letter Deliveries

COPENHAGEN, Dec 31 (Bernama-dpa) -- Denmark has become the first country in Europe to discontinue public letter delivery as Swedish-Danish postal company Postnord on Tuesday delivered its last letters to tie up 401 years of postal history, German Press Agency (dpa) reported.

Denmark is one of the most digitised countries in the world and the number of letters had fallen by 90 per cent since 2000, the state-run company said in March as it announced the move.

It added that it intended to instead focus entirely on parcel deliveries, as online shopping continues to increase.

On Tuesday, the service delivered its last ever letter to Copenhagen's ENIGMA Museum of Communication, where it will become a permanent part of the exhibition.

The state-run postal service started to remove the country's 1,500 red public mailboxes in the second half of 2025 and stopped selling stamps on December 18.

Since mid-December, interested parties have been able to purchase one of 1,000 of the boxes – "a small piece of Danish cultural heritage," as Postnord put it – online. Depending on their condition, they cost the equivalent of US$230 to US$320. The proceeds will go to charity.

Within a few days, all the letterboxes were sold.

From January, another 200 boxes will be auctioned off, including some designed by Danish artists. Other examples of the letterboxes, which have been part of the Danish cityscape for more than 170 years, are likely to find a place in a museum.

Letter delivery in Denmark has been steadily reducing and made more expensive in recent years. In 2025, the cheapest postage for a letter within Denmark, with a delivery time of up to five days, was just under €4 (US$4.3). 

Denmark is not the only country where the letter business is in decline. Deutsche Post said it would cut 8,000 jobs by the end of the year, while the United Kingdom's Royal Mail has been advocating for some time that letters should not be delivered on all weekdays.

Going forward, Danes will still be able to send letters through other logistics companies such as the smaller DAO, a private Danish logistics and delivery company.

-- BERNAMA-dpa