More than 20,000 images were sent to the Swedish-Danish Postnord’s competition through Instagram. Now the jury has cut them, down to 20 finalists.
The general public can still vote for their three favorites intil 20 October, where three images with the highest votes will be combined with the judges’ four picks to make up seven new stamps.
The winning stamps will be presented in November, and released in May 2017.
One of the images that made it to the final 20 was Fredrik Thomasson holding his sleeping son, Charlie.
“I was sitting watching TV and drinking my coffee when they were doing an interview with Postnord about the competition. That picture came to mind straight away because it means a lot for me. I sent it in for fun and apparently more people than just me like it,” he told The Local.
“Charlie has already decided that if we get to be on a stamp he wants to send the fee we’ll get to sick kids so they can be happy and perhaps healthy. So it’ll go to the Swedish Barncancerfonden (Child Cancer Fund),” he explained.
The rest of the top 20 can be viewed on Postnord’s website for the competition.
This is the first time that the general public will compete to be on one of Sweden’s stamps, but the country has a history for getting creative with its postage.
In 2014, stamps featuring pictures of Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s famous bicycle kick goal against England were released.
Feature image (on top) Evening promenade in the woods by Monica Thelin
Swedish Stamp Competition, source: The Local.se