2026 Holiday Shipping Deadlines: UPS and FedEx

Short answer

For Christmas Eve 2026 delivery, the latest UPS service is UPS Next Day Air, and the package must be tendered to UPS by Wednesday, December 23. FedEx SameDay can still ship on Thursday, December 24. Ground and multi-day services leave earlier, and the ground date depends on where the package starts and where it is going.

UPS 2026 last days to ship

These are the recommended last days to ship for delivery by Thursday, December 24, 2026, from the 2026 Year-End Holiday Schedule on UPS's holiday shipping page. Use the UPS Calculate Time and Cost tool for ground transit from your origin.

Next Day Air on Wednesday, December 23, needs UPS On-Call Pickup, UPS Smart Pickup, another prearranged or scheduled pickup, or a drop at The UPS Store or a UPS Authorized Service Location. On Thursday, December 24, UPS runs normal delivery. Pickup is available only for Air and International Air if it was prearranged by Friday, December 18. There is no UPS Ground pickup on December 24. Next Day Air picked up on December 24 will deliver Monday, December 28, unless it is labeled for Saturday delivery. Friday, December 25, is a UPS holiday with no pickup or delivery.

From November 16, 2026, through January 8, 2027, a limited number of UPS Ground and UPS Standard packages may need additional transit time. A limited number of 2nd Day Air packages tendered December 14, 15, 16, or 21, and 3 Day Select packages tendered December 14 or 15, may need an extra day. Some international destinations may require an earlier ship date than the table shows.

FedEx 2026 last days to ship

FedEx lists its 2026 shipping deadlines for holiday packages at fedex.com. The last days to ship for arrival by Thursday, December 24, 2026, are below.

FedEx Ground and Home Delivery last days assume a regular scheduled pickup or a drop-off at a staffed FedEx location. Transit is typically one to five business days in the contiguous U.S. and three to seven business days to and from Alaska and Hawaii. International dates do not include customs clearance. FedEx notes that these dates can change and says updates will be posted, so check the sheet again in mid-December.

Check a ship date

Pick the day the package will be handed to the carrier and how long ground takes on your lane. The checker shows which UPS and FedEx domestic services still make Christmas Eve, using the carrier dates above. It runs in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere.

Why the ground date is the one that bites

Ground is where the calendar gets tight. There is no single UPS Ground deadline. A five-day FedEx Ground lane has to leave Thursday, December 17, a full week before Christmas Eve. UPS Ground can slow from November 16, 2026, through January 8, 2027, when a limited number of packages need extra transit time. If you quote shoppers one national order-by date, you are either paying for air on late orders or disappointing customers in the longest lanes. The common mistake is planning around the Wednesday, December 23, air deadline when many orders ship ground. Your ecommerce fulfillment plan should map each shipping zone to a service level before peak hits.

Work backward to set your order-by date

Work backward through the chain. The carrier date is the last day the carrier takes the package. Before that, your fulfillment center has to pick, pack, label, and stage the shipment. Before that, the shopper has to place the order and the order has to clear any fraud or inventory hold. That means your published order-by date must sit earlier than the carrier deadline.

Take UPS 2nd Day Air. The carrier wants it by Tuesday, December 22, so the shopper's order has to land before your warehouse's cutoff that day, or earlier. You also need buffer for exceptions: a kitted bundle with a missing component, a multi-piece order, or a carrier pickup that runs late. Move late orders to air automatically. Do not leave that decision to the customer at checkout. If the order is in a long ground lane and the date has passed, upgrade the service or split the shipment. Our pick and pack team and kitting operation handle multi-piece and assembled orders under the same cutoff, but the cutoff still exists.

How J.M. Field handles holiday fulfillment

J.M. Field has run peak season out of one Fort Lauderdale, Florida, facility since 1993. We have 100-plus associates and report 99.8% order accuracy. We ship UPS, FedEx, USPS, and LTL with real-time multi-carrier rate shopping on every shipment. Orders are scheduled for same-day or next-business-day shipping based on program cutoff times, volume, and handling requirements. Confirm your holiday order cutoff with your J.M. Field account manager before peak starts.

Before the season, we forecast with clients and bring in temporary labor when required. We extend shifts to nights and weekends when volume demands it. Our All In View platform runs orders and inventory and integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, Amazon, BigCommerce, and more than 100 other platforms. Inventory counts update in real time, so your storefront is not selling stock that already left the shelf. Branded packaging and automatic tracking confirmation are part of the service. We handle international shipping with customs documentation. Limited hazardous-materials shipping may be available for approved products after SDS and carrier-requirement review. J.M. Field is not a dedicated hazardous-materials storage facility. The facility sits near Miami International Airport and Port Everglades.

If you want a deeper look at freight readiness, read our peak season 2026 freight prep post. For platform and inventory visibility, see All In View.

Start with the tables above, build in your fulfillment cutoff, and publish an order-by date your shoppers can trust. If you need a fulfillment partner that treats those dates as seriously as you do, contact J.M. Field and we will walk through your peak plan.