Contact Sport book cover

Twelve years have passed since the 2014 World Radiosport Team Championship took place in the woods of Massachusetts in the United States.

That event became the basis for one of the more interesting amateur radio books written in the 21st century, Contact Sport, by author and radio amateur J.K. George.

“Pairs of contestants huddle in tents filled with communications equipment. Their voices soar through the air, riding waves into the atmosphere, as they comb through static and noise for a response from the other side of the world. They’re searching for loot in the form of other voices in the sky. The rarer their contact, the more valuable their treasure.”

Fast-forward to present day and WRTC 2026 will soon get underway in the UK.

Here’s how World Radio League describes it:

The Olympics of Amateur Radio Contesting is almost upon us. On 8th July 2026, competitors that have qualified to represent their Qualification Area (unlike the Olympics, which has participants competing for their country) will arrive in the United Kingdom Headquarters for this once every 4 year event.

50 teams of two, each with an assigned referee, will be allocated an HF operating site in East Anglia, where they will take part in a 24 hour SSB/CW contest over the weekend of 11th/12th July. This is your opportunity to work these special stations and apply for your award!

The WRTC contest will be live on a dedicated online platform provided by World Radio League. This is a live scoreboard where you can track your favorite team in real time. Also, when you contact one of the special WRTC stations, you can see it on the WRL platform. What’s more, you can check which of the 50 WRTC stations you still need to contact. Can you work all 50 of them? If you’re an SSB operator, there are 250 possible QSOs across 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10m.

Similarly, there are 250 possible QSOs if you are a CW operator. If you are both an SSB and CW operator, 500 QSOs are possible with WRTC stations alone! Certificates will be downloadable after the contest, which will display your total number of QSOs made with these special callsigns. There are different award tiers depending on how many you contact.

Full contest rules and award details are on the WRTC 2026 site. See you in the pileups!