The World Radio Sport Team Championship 2026 (WRTC) and the World Radio League (WRL), have just announced a partnership to launch a new live contesting technology platform in order to bring an innovative and exciting live experience to ham radio.

Ham radio competitions are events where amateur radio operators make contacts all around the world with their own equipment, over a few hours or even several days. They score points for each contact they make, with additional points or multipliers for contact with different countries, regions, or using certain radio frequencies (bands).

Tens of thousands of ham radio enthusiasts tune in for ham radio contests every year, but WRTC and WRL are dreaming even bigger - bringing a true eSports quality experience to the world of ham radio.

WRTC is the World Cup of ham radio competitions, and only happens every 4 years. Only the best ham radio HF contest operators are selected to compete from around the world based on rigorous qualification rounds of competitions leading up to WRTC.

Much like the World Cup, the host country of WRTC moves every 4 years. WRTC 2026 will take place in England, UK, in July 2026.

Mark Haynes is leading the event organization, and has a big vision for expanding global visibility of the competition. He comments “We are delighted to be working with World Radio League as it supports our aim to provide a platform for the competition specifics such as real time logging whilst additionally displaying useful statistics, media and further information.”

The New Technology Platform

The World Radio League (WRL) is a new ham radio platform started in 2023 that has made waves in the ham radio industry by creating an easy to use web-based logging and competition platform, and has drawn over 10,000 users to it’s new POTA logger.

James Cribbs, KN4NEH, CEO of WRL, said, “World Radio League is extremely excited and passionate to partner with WRTC to bring a new live ham radio contest experience to life. We believe that great technology, and media, is the key to attracting a wider audience to watch the live event, and ultimately growing ham radio for decades to come.”

But you don’t have to wait until 2026 to get a preview of what is to come.

WRTC and WRL will be debuting version one of the new experience for the IARU 2025 competition in July 2025!