World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC) 2026

World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC) 2026

I had mentioned about Amateur Radio Direction Finding or Fox Hunt as a popular form of radio sport among amateur radio (ham radio) operators worldwide. World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC) 2026 is being organized in the United Kingdom. Saw a few Twitter posts on WRTC 2026, which prompted me to have a look at their website today. Just like the Olympic Games, WRTC is also held once in 4 years.

It is a platform for high-achieving amateur radio contestors to compete using identical antennas, power output and operating conditions, in the same geographic region. Participating teams have to qualify by scoring extremely well in several HF radio contests from October 2023 to March 2025. That means the process has already started! Fifty qualifying teams with total of 100 operators will reach the United Kingdom in July 2026 for WRTC 2026. They will be representing their home countries as in the Olympic Games.

Each team will have a Referee, operating site and callsign and will operate the 24-hour IARU 2026 Contest. A live scoreboard will be available, adding to the excitement of WRTC 2026! As mentioned in my previous post, at the international level, the competitions are organized under the auspices of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU). There are 15 qualifying events during the period between October 2023 and March 2025. Qualifying events have a graded maximum point system and applicants can submit scores from up to 8 qualifying events towards their qualifying score. Maximum value of 1000 points each are there for CQ WW DX CW, CQ WW DX SSB and IARU HF Championship.

Highest category weightage of 1.0 is given for single operator high power which includes all band or single band, unassisted, single mode or mixed mode. Lowest weightage of 0.7 is given for multi-operator multi-transmitter category, as expected. But I wonder why single operator low power, unassisted category gets only 0.95 weightage. 42 qualifying teams will be from different continents with 18 from Europe, 14 from North America, 5 from Asia, one from Africa and two each from South America and Oceania.

Of the eight special teams, one will be the defending champions of the WRTC 2022. There will be four youth teams under the age of 26 years at WRTC 2026. Two sponsored teams and one wild card team nominated by the WRTC 2026 organizing committee are being planned. Wild Card team is meant to acknowledge exceptional efforts within the pool of applicants that did not otherwise qualify.

WRTC 2022 was held at Italy, WRTC 2018 at Germany and WRTC 2014 in the United States of America. Venues of previous WRTCs up to 1990 and the winners are available at https://wrtc.info/. WRTC event organizers are selected by the WRTC Sanctioning Committee. The committee has a president, secretary and members from the previous WRTCs, typically two from each.