Magyar Posta is marking the staging of the 35th LEN European Aquatics Championships in Hungary by issuing a special stamp. Fifty thousand copies of the stamp designed by the graphic artist Krisztián Daniel were produced by ANY Security Printing Company.
The LEN European Championships is the world’s oldest continental event for aquatic sports. Europe is still the only continent where competitions exclusively for aquatic sports are held every two years.
In 2021 the event returns to its place of inception because Budapest hosted the championship on the first occasion between 18 and 22 August 1926. Since then, the Hungarian capital held the event in 1958, 2006 and 2010, and, by staging it again this year, Hungary now holds the record for hosting the continental competition in terms of frequency. For the first time since 1997, the best from all five aquatic disciplines are competing at the same venue, the European Water Polo Championship having already been held at Budapest’s Duna Arena in January 2020 prior to the outbreak of the pandemic.
In the design of the commemorative stamp the dynamism of a swimmer flowing into one with the water is shown. The first day cover features the different events of the European Championships and pictograms depicting them in combination with the logos. The main element of the postmark is the logo of the European Championships, which incorporates the arm movements of swimmers in the date 2020, an H as the international abbreviation for Hungary and the chemical formula of water, H2O. The logo appears in colour on the stamp and the first day cover, which is essentially blue but also includes the Hungarian national colours, red, white and green.
