2020 is once again a year full of jubilees. On the page above you can find a small list of jubilees, which I think are noticeable, but the question about the one big jubilee is much more interesting, also when you look at stamps. 2017 had the Reformation, 2018 the End of World War I and 2019 the Moon Landing (and Gandhi). But what is the One for 2020? I was looking through the stamp programmes of some countries I collect and the three big jubilees you see very often are the 250th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven, the 75th anniversary of the End of World War II and 75 years United Nations. To choose the One between these three I made a small list:
Notes: These are by far not all countries, but just as I said some of the ones I collect and for which I found stamp programmes. Jersey, the Netherlands and the USA got an asterisk, because their programmes are not complete. Jersey and the Netherlands just announced the programmes for the first half of 2020 and the USA usually add some stamps to their programme during the year. Gibraltar got a question mark for Beethoven, as they plan a set about Birth Anniversaries in September, which might or might not include Beethoven. The World War II issues of Israel, Poland and Ukraine finally got an asterisk, because they do not commemorate the End of World War II, but something connected. Israel will get and Poland got a stamp about the camp liberation and Ukraine will get a "Never again" stamp.
EDIT: The Birth Anniversaries set from Gibraltar was moved to March and will feature Beethoven along Florence Nightingale and Rosalind Franklin.
So with this list my personal winner is Beethoven and I already created a new page at the top, in which I will try to keep an updated list of all Beethoven stamps this year and show my collection of these stamps, although I will not try to get all of them. From time to time some of these stamps might also get extra posts, but I am not sure about that yet. World War II however will also not remain unnoticed here. I have already planned something for that.
So far Beethoven stamps were already released in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Serb Post), Germany, Guernsey, North Macedonia and Ukraine. Portugal will follow on 26th February. This is actually quite interesting, as Beethoven was just born at the end of 1770. Guernsey in fact planned something very interesting for the Beethoven Year, as they will issue four stamps at different dates, which will create a single image. Germany also issued or will issue the stamp in actually every possible form. A gummed version, a self-adhesive booklet and even a souvenir sheet were issued already on 2nd January and a self-adhesive coil will be issued in March. I am sure a prepaid envelope will also follow sometime this year. Also some special postmarks were already available and many more will surely follow. My favourite one so far is this one from Hiddenhausen, which highlights that Beethoven's 9th is actually used as Anthem of Europa.
