bpost Surcharges 2026

Drop-off of Parcels in the bpost Retail Network
A surcharge will be charged for dropping off national and international parcels within the bpost network (post office, post point, and parcel locker). This surcharge does not apply to return shipments.

Missing Pre-Announcement File
For the drop-off of national parcels (excluding bpack XL) for which the pre-announcement file is missing at the time of sorting, or where essential information required for delivery is missing (e.g. the delivery address).

Parcel with Unreadable Shipping Label
If the parcel is not provided with a barcode label, or if the barcode applied by the customer is not readable in accordance with the Operational Guidelines, bpost reserves the right to apply a barcode to the parcel itself. The costs for this additional handling will be charged to the customer.

Manual Handling of Parcels
bpost reserves the right to handle parcels manually if it deems this necessary. For national parcels (excluding bpack XL) that cannot be sorted (semi-)automatically and therefore require manual processing, a surcharge will be applied.

Criteria for manual handling

• Weight: Parcels weighing more than 20 kg (in the case of a flat rate for parcels weighing 0–30 kg).

• Dimensions: One side longer than 100 cm or the smallest surface exceeding 70 cm × 60 cm.

• Shape: Any packaging for which the label cannot be processed horizontally (e.g. cylinders) or any packaging with a shape that may cause damage (e.g. packaging with protruding shapes).

• Contents: Loose contents inside the packaging or contents that may cause damage.

The above list of criteria is not exhaustive. bpost reserves the right to process parcels manually whenever it deems this necessary.

Parcel Outside Dimension/Weight Limits
For national parcels (excluding bpack XL) that exceed one of the criteria below, a tariff surcharge will be applied:

• Out of dimensions: Longest side longer than 1.5 m or a girth greater than 3 meters, measured according to the following formula: 1 × length + 2 × width + 2 × height;

• Out of weight: More than 30 kg.

>30 to 40 kg
Surcharge of
€52.58
>40 kg
Surcharge of
€65.75
Out of dimensions
Surcharge of
€65.75

Parcel Density
For national parcels (excluding parcels where length + width + height < 70 cm and bpack XL) with a density below the threshold of 120 kg/m³, a surcharge will be applied.

Concrete surcharge example

• A parcel with dimensions of 100 cm × 100 cm × 100 cm has a volume of 1 m³. If this parcel weighs 100 kg, the tariff surcharge for this parcel is calculated as follows: (120 kg − 100 kg) = 20 × €0.00340 = €0.06800.

Parcel Drop-off During Year-End Peak Period
For the delivery of national parcels (excluding bpack XL), a surcharge applies during the year-end peak period. The peak period is determined by bpost and starts at 6:00 a.m. on the day after the fourth Thursday of November (“Black Friday”) and ends at 6:00 a.m. on December 25 (Christmas Day).
For 2025, this period runs from 27 November 2025 (06:00) to 25 December 2025 (06:00).

Parcel “Returned to Sender”
For all national parcels (excluding bpack XL), a surcharge applies for returning parcels that cannot be delivered to the recipient. This surcharge does not apply to parcels returned using a bpack return solution.

The surcharge for returning parcels applies to:

• parcels that cannot be delivered due to incorrect address details;

• parcels that are refused by the recipient;

• parcels that are not collected by the recipient.