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Does Anyone Still Fax in 2026?
Which countries still use fax – and why?
In 2026, Japan’s ministries process millions of documents by fax daily, Germany’s federal government still operates 1,400 fax machines, and South Korea’s National Assembly takes bomb threats by fax – because email leaves no paper original to forensically trust. These aren’t holdouts who missed the memo. They’re some of the most tech-fluent governments on earth, and each has decided fax still solves a problem nothing else does. This page is the country-by-country tour: where fax persists, and the surprisingly specific reasons it does.
Latest country reports
Fresh dispatches on where fax is still the default channel
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Miami-Dade County Government: Deadline Approaching To Renew Golden Passport
Miami-Dade’s Golden Passport renewal still accepts fax — proof US local government often runs the fax line right alongside the online form.
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The outdated machine hampering the fight against Covid-19
Austin’s COVID-19 case-tracing backlog had a single culprit: the fax machine. BBC Future on how 1980s tech jammed a 2020 health response.
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Japanese fax fans rally to defence of much-maligned machine
In Japan, hundreds of government offices rally to the defense of the fax machine, forcing the government to abandon its mission to turn officialdom into a digital-only operation.
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German parliament to stop using fax machines
The German Bundestag is phasing out fax for official notices — a small step in Berlin’s long, complicated breakup with the fax machine.
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Japanese Hospitals File COVID cases by fax
At the pandemic’s peak, Japanese doctors hand-wrote each COVID case report and walked it to a fax machine. The rule that made fax the bottleneck.
Where fax still rules – country by country
Six countries, six different reasons fax refuses to die. Pick one.
Japan
Japan retired the floppy disk before it retired the fax. When the Digital Agency tried to do both, ministry workflows pushed back. Hospitals, banks and city halls still send by fax – not because Japan can’t do email, but because the signed, paper-trail original is the document that legally matters. Read the ministry pushback story →
Germany
Germany’s federal ministries still operate 1,400 fax machines in 2026, even after a decade of digital-first rhetoric. The legal status of a faxed signature, GDPR risk on every alternative, and a procurement culture allergic to new vendors all keep the dial tone alive in the Bundestag basement. See the Bund’s 1,400-machine count →
South Korea
South Korea’s National Assembly takes its bomb threats by fax. It’s not nostalgia – for adversarial communications, a fax leaves a tamper-resistant paper original that email can’t. The same logic keeps fax inside Korean ministries, courts and hospitals long after the rest of the office stack went cloud-native. The Seoul Sunday bomb-thread story →
United Kingdom
The UK was supposed to be done. The NHS banned new fax purchases in 2018, ministers set a sunset, and then Northern Rail was caught faxing into 2024 anyway. Deadlines keep slipping because the receiving end – a magistrate, a referring doctor, a council legal team – hasn’t moved. Why Britain’s fax farewell keeps being deferred →
Croatia
In 2022 a Croatian minister proudly described fax as the country’s cutting-edge inter-ministry channel – and meant it. Smaller EU states often run the same calculus: fewer compliance moving parts, fewer migration projects, and a piece of paper everyone in the building already knows how to file. “Cutting-edge” in Zagreb, explained →
Australia
Australia’s hospitals still fax referrals because the alternative – pulling every clinic, pharmacy and aged-care home onto a single secure messaging standard – is the harder problem. Until the receiving end goes digital, the sender keeps a fax line plugged in next to the printer. Inside the Australian healthcare fax conundrum →
Need to send a fax to one of these countries?
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Got a fax to send to one of these countries?
The reasons Japan, Germany and Korea kept their fax lines are the same reasons your fax will land. No machine, no subscription. Just send it.
