FedEx’s 2026 Holiday Surcharges Are Up 23%: Ship Before Sept. 28

FedEx has confirmed its 2026 holiday peak season surcharges, and the numbers are higher than last year across nearly every service level — including the international and ground services that cross-border shoppers and package forwarders rely on. The surcharge window runs from September 28, 2026 through January 17, 2027. If you’re planning to stock up on US goods before the holidays, the cost of shipping them home is about to change, and it’s worth knowing the new numbers before you order.

What FedEx Just Announced

The new peak season fees, effective September 28 through January 17, include a noticeable jump in the Ground Residential Demand surcharge, which will peak at $0.80 per package this year compared to $0.65 last year — a 23% increase. Other new charges include Express Demand Surcharges of $1.20 to $2.55 per package on overnight and two-day services, and a Ground Economy Demand surcharge of $2.55 to $4.05 per package. Two fees matter most for anyone shipping outside the US: an Additional Handling charge of $8.80 to $11.85, and an Oversize charge of $95.75 to $117.25. Both are explicitly scoped to apply to International Ground shipments, not just domestic ones. UPS hadn’t published its 2026 peak season rates as of FedEx’s announcement, but UPS has historically followed with a similar surcharge schedule within weeks, so shoppers routing through UPS should expect a comparable increase soon.

Why This Matters If You Shop US Stores From Abroad

Peak season surcharges aren’t a minor domestic line item — they’re built to apply to the exact kind of shipping that international shoppers and small resellers do. Multi-item orders, bulky electronics, furniture parts, or irregularly shaped boxes are precisely what trips the Additional Handling and Oversize fees, and those fees stack on top of the higher per-package demand surcharge. For someone shipping a single consolidated order a few times a year, that’s a real difference in landed cost if the package ships between late September and mid-January instead of a few weeks earlier or later.

How to Beat the Surcharge Window

• If you’re planning a large or heavy purchase — furniture, appliances, resale lots — try to get it shipped before September 28, ahead of the surcharge window.
• Watch package dimensions and weight before ordering bulky items; staying under the oversize thresholds avoids the biggest single fee in the list.
• Consolidate multiple store orders into one shipment instead of shipping each separately. This is one advantage of routing through a forwarder like Viabox: combining several US purchases into a single box before it ships internationally means paying one set of carrier surcharges instead of several, and it’s easier to keep a consolidated package under the size and weight limits that trigger the extra charges.
• If a shipment isn’t time-sensitive, holding it until after January 17 avoids the peak window entirely.

What to Watch Next

Expect UPS to publish its own 2026 peak season surcharge schedule in the coming weeks, likely following a similar pattern to FedEx’s increase. This is also part of a longer trend — peak season fees have climbed most years since carriers introduced them, so treating the September-to-January window as a planning factor, not a surprise, is becoming a permanent part of shipping smart from the US. Whatever carrier or schedule you end up shipping on, knowing the fee calendar ahead of time — and consolidating where you can — is the simplest way to keep your shipping costs predictable through the holidays.