US carrier holiday shipping cutoffs 2026 (USPS + FedEx)
Agent-curated demand intelligence: the 22 published 2026 holiday-season last-ship dates from USPS (8 rows: 4 services x lower-48/offshore) and FedEx (14 rows: 10 domestic + 4 US-to-Canada), joinable to shop orders by ISO send-by date + carrier + destination country. Each row carries days-before-Christmas, a documented green/amber/red late-season risk tier, and an is_first_cutoff flag marking the carrier's operationally critical first deadline. Provenance: agent-curated (intel-1 run 2026-09-29) from the carriers' published 2026 schedules, cross-verified across independent sources on 2026-09-29; rows encode the schedules verbatim and the code derives dates, tiers, and hashes. Caveats: UPS and Canada Post 2026 dates were not yet published (no rows — absence means not-yet-published); USPS international/military dates due mid-October 2026; FedEx Ground transit-day rows vary by ZIP; all dates are recommendations, not guarantees (FedEx suspends money-back guarantee in peak). Annual snapshot, yearly cadence.
- Rows
- 22
- Columns
- 19
- Source cadence
- Yearly
- Last refreshed
- Sep 29, 2026
- Theme
- economy
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| cutoff_id | string | Deterministic primary key: <CARRIER>-<service slug>-<destination_scope>. |
| carrier | string | Carrier: USPS or FedEx. Join key with the shop's carrier choice. |
| service_name | string | Service name as published by the carrier. |
| service_tier | string | Normalized tier: economy, standard, expedited, express, overnight, sameday. |
| speed_rank | integer | Speed rank within the carrier (1 = slowest); orders services cheapest-first. |
| origin_country_code | string | ISO alpha-3 origin country (always USA). |
| dest_country_code | string | ISO alpha-3 destination country (USA domestic, CAN for US-to-Canada lanes). |
| destination_scope | string | us_lower48, us_offshore (AK/HI/PR/territories), us_domestic, us_to_canada. |
| year | integer | Holiday season year. (unit: year) |
| send_by_date | date | Carrier-recommended last ship date for on-time holiday arrival (ISO date). |
| target_arrival_date | date | Arrival target the cutoff is published against (2026-12-25 USPS, 2026-12-24 FedEx). |
| days_before_christmas | integer | Days between send_by_date and 2026-12-25. (unit: days) |
| risk_tier | string | Late-season risk: green (>=10 days before Christmas), amber (5-9), red (<5). |
| is_first_cutoff | integer | 1 for the earliest cutoff within each (carrier, destination_scope) group — the operational 'stop promising Christmas on standard shipping' date. |
| guarantee_type | string | Always 'recommended': carriers publish recommended dates, not guarantees, in peak season. |
| source_url | string | Carrier holiday page behind the row. |
| source_domain | string | Independent secondary source the row was cross-verified against on 2026-09-29. |
| collected_at | string | Date the carrier schedule was read (ISO date). |
| row_hash | string | Deterministic row key: first 16 hex chars of sha256 over canonical row values. |
First 10 sample rows — a preview, not the complete dataset.
| cutoff_id | carrier | service_name | service_tier | speed_rank | origin_country_code | dest_country_code | destination_scope | year | send_by_date | target_arrival_date | days_before_christmas | risk_tier | is_first_cutoff | guarantee_type | source_url | source_domain | collected_at | row_hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USPS-ground-advantage-us_lower48 | USPS | USPS Ground Advantage | economy | 1 | USA | USA | us_lower48 | 2,026 | 2026-12-17 | 2026-12-25 | 8 | amber | 1 | recommended | https://www.usps.com/holiday/holiday-shipping-dates.htm | valueaddedresource.net | 2026-09-29 | 9bc3b06edda1fe41 |
| USPS-first-class-mail-us_lower48 | USPS | First-Class Mail | standard | 2 | USA | USA | us_lower48 | 2,026 | 2026-12-17 | 2026-12-25 | 8 | amber | 1 | recommended | https://www.usps.com/holiday/holiday-shipping-dates.htm | valueaddedresource.net | 2026-09-29 | acaa4d5bb623d645 |
| USPS-priority-mail-us_lower48 | USPS | Priority Mail | expedited | 3 | USA | USA | us_lower48 | 2,026 | 2026-12-18 | 2026-12-25 | 7 | amber | 0 | recommended | https://www.usps.com/holiday/holiday-shipping-dates.htm | mailstationmonroe.com | 2026-09-29 | b1f0a85470706256 |
| USPS-priority-mail-express-us_lower48 | USPS | Priority Mail Express | express | 4 | USA | USA | us_lower48 | 2,026 | 2026-12-19 | 2026-12-25 | 6 | amber | 0 | recommended | https://www.usps.com/holiday/holiday-shipping-dates.htm | mailstationmonroe.com | 2026-09-29 | cb461eadc9f502e5 |
| USPS-ground-advantage-us_offshore | USPS | USPS Ground Advantage | economy | 1 | USA | USA | us_offshore | 2,026 | 2026-12-16 | 2026-12-25 | 9 | amber | 1 | recommended | https://www.usps.com/holiday/holiday-shipping-dates.htm | valueaddedresource.net | 2026-09-29 | c7fc960fea0a387a |
| USPS-first-class-mail-us_offshore | USPS | First-Class Mail | standard | 2 | USA | USA | us_offshore | 2,026 | 2026-12-17 | 2026-12-25 | 8 | amber | 0 | recommended | https://www.usps.com/holiday/holiday-shipping-dates.htm | 3plcenter.com | 2026-09-29 | dd70eddded654cdf |
| USPS-priority-mail-us_offshore | USPS | Priority Mail | expedited | 3 | USA | USA | us_offshore | 2,026 | 2026-12-18 | 2026-12-25 | 7 | amber | 0 | recommended | https://www.usps.com/holiday/holiday-shipping-dates.htm | 3plcenter.com | 2026-09-29 | 210f8e467f6e3922 |
| USPS-priority-mail-express-us_offshore | USPS | Priority Mail Express | express | 4 | USA | USA | us_offshore | 2,026 | 2026-12-19 | 2026-12-25 | 6 | amber | 0 | recommended | https://www.usps.com/holiday/holiday-shipping-dates.htm | valueaddedresource.net | 2026-09-29 | 78b55793e78dc1f6 |
| FedEx-ground-economy-us_domestic | FedEx | FedEx Ground Economy | economy | 1 | USA | USA | us_domestic | 2,026 | 2026-12-15 | 2026-12-24 | 10 | green | 1 | recommended | https://www.fedex.com/en-us/holiday.html | valueaddedresource.net | 2026-09-29 | e4d6d849cf0d3988 |
| FedEx-ground-home-delivery-5-day-transit-us_domestic | FedEx | FedEx Ground / Home Delivery (5-day transit) | standard | 2 | USA | USA | us_domestic | 2,026 | 2026-12-17 | 2026-12-24 | 8 | amber | 0 | recommended | https://www.fedex.com/en-us/holiday.html | valueaddedresource.net | 2026-09-29 | f40a2bbdda5922ef |
- Current
20260929T081310Z-ab4a9bbccce8 · sha256 ab4a9bbccce8…
22 rows · first snapshot
Point any LLM at the metadata endpoint — the documentation above is machine-readable too (JSON-LD + Croissant).
curl "https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/carrier_holiday_cutoffs/us_carrier_holiday_shipping_cutoffs_annual" | jq '{title, rows, columns_count, license}'import requests
ds = requests.get("https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/carrier_holiday_cutoffs/us_carrier_holiday_shipping_cutoffs_annual").json()
print(ds["title"], ds["rows"], "rows")
# Sample rows for an LLM context window
for row in ds.get("sample_rows", [])[:5]:
print(row)API endpoint: https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/carrier_holiday_cutoffs/us_carrier_holiday_shipping_cutoffs_annual
Tip: fetch /llms.txt for the full machine-readable catalog.
Where this data comes from and what was made from it. Other people's work shows as counts; only shared projects are named.
Cite this snapshot
Pinned to snapshot 20260929T081310Z-ab4a9bbccce8 and its content hash, so readers get exactly the data you used.
USPS + FedEx 2026 holiday shipping schedules (agent-curated). (2026). US carrier holiday shipping cutoffs 2026 (USPS + FedEx) [Data set, snapshot 20260929T081310Z-ab4a9bbccce8, sha256 ab4a9bbccce8]. Datazimuts. Retrieved 2026-09-30, from https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/carrier_holiday_cutoffs/us_carrier_holiday_shipping_cutoffs_annual?snapshot=20260929T081310Z-ab4a9bbccce8
@misc{dz_carrier_holiday_cutoffs_us_carrier_holid_ab4a9bbc,
title = {{US carrier holiday shipping cutoffs 2026 (USPS + FedEx)}},
author = {{USPS + FedEx 2026 holiday shipping schedules (agent-curated)}},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Datazimuts},
howpublished = {\url{https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/carrier_holiday_cutoffs/us_carrier_holiday_shipping_cutoffs_annual?snapshot=20260929T081310Z-ab4a9bbccce8}},
note = {Snapshot 20260929T081310Z-ab4a9bbccce8, sha256 ab4a9bbccce885319b5a2f110d7fd6fa96dafa4b974ac21aff3ad7fc5a1b5f9d; accessed 2026-09-30}
}Embed a table or a chart
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<iframe src="https://datazimuts.com/embed/chart?dataset=carrier_holiday_cutoffs%2Fus_carrier_holiday_shipping_cutoffs_annual&lang=en&theme=auto&snapshot=20260929T081310Z-ab4a9bbccce8&x=year&y=speed_rank&agg=avg" title="US carrier holiday shipping cutoffs 2026 (USPS + FedEx)" width="100%" height="380" style="border:0" loading="lazy"></iframe>
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