Changed results WRTC 2026!

The World Championship of Amateur Radio Teams WRTC 2026 has undergone unprecedented developments. Nearly seven weeks after the official announcement of the results in Wyboston (UK), the organizing committee on September 1, 2026 published a completely recalculated results table that cancels and replaces the originally announced ranking. The change came after the public provided the organizers with information following the end of the competition, leading to a comprehensive investigation.

What led to the change in WRTC 2026 results?

After the competition ended, WRTC entered its traditional 'second phase' - competitors compared their own logs, monitored multiplier strategies, and analyzed opponents' decisions, as is customary in elite contesting. However, this time a pattern emerged that several experienced operators deemed difficult to explain and worthy of closer examination.

The discussion began with an analysis by Alex Avramov, LZ4AX, who published a list of ten callsigns appearing in the WRTC logs under circumstances he deemed unusual: YV1LBB, 4F3OM, 4S7KM, HZ1TT, 4K6FO, TI1W, HC5AI, HL2CFY, 9M8YY and 9M2LAN. All operated exclusively in CW, žiadna nepodala denník do IARU HF World Championship a žiadna sa nezdala udržiavať vlastnú CQ frequency - instead, they seemingly moved across the WRTC field of stations and provided rare multipliers.

A key shift in the discussion was brought by Tim Shoppa, N3QE, who approached the issue chronologically instead of statistically - he compiled all connections with suspicious callsigns into a single timeline across publicly available logs. The list, after adding the two callsigns ZP5KO and ZS6WAR, expanded to twelve callsigns. Read from start to finish, it no longer resembled dozens of independent DX stations - it looked like one station passing through multiple identities within a few minutes.

Sledovacia sieť skimmerov tieto značky prakticky nezachytávala, hoci každá z nich uskutočnila desiatky spojení počas víkendu – 86 % zo 435 spojení s týmito pätnástimi značkami smerovalo práve na stanice WRTC, oproti približne 13 % u ostatných účastníkov IARU HF World Championship.

Alex Tkatch, KU1CW subsequently argued that if there were disputed connections with pirate brands, they should not remain in the final score regardless of whether the competitors were aware of it. He pointed to the so-called 'multiplier cliff' – two teams, MB2M and MB2A, worked with suspicious brands significantly more often than any other team in the field. The organizing committee issued an official statement on July 27, 2026, confirming that discrepancies in logs could affect the final ranking of teams and ordered the Judging Committee to conduct a complete reanalysis.

Video: Investigation into WRTC 2026 results

Connections YV1LBB, 4F3OM, 4S7KM, HZ1TT, 4K6FO, TI1W, HC5AI, HL2CFY, 9M8YY, 9M2LAN, ZP5KO and ZS6WAR

According to the final report of the Judging Committee, a total of fifteen pirate call signs were identified as being used to fake multiplier connections: in addition to the originally listed twelve, 9H1FL, OD5NZ, and XE2IF were added. Each of the call signs belonged to a country that was otherwise rare or absent in that year, so almost every connection with it created a new multiplier. No logs were received from any of the fifteen stations. Thirteen of the fifteen holders of actual call signs confirmed upon contact that they were either not on the air at all or did not makeany connection with any WRTC station.

Five brands – nominally from Sri Lanka, Korea, the Philippines, and Eastern and Western Malaysia – never transmitted at the same minute simultaneously during the entire 24 hours of the race, indicating one transmitter switching between five identities. A special case was HC5AI, which was indeed in the ether during the day, working regular stations and being captured by skimmers. Eight hours later, the same brand appeared exclusively while working with WRTC stations, without any regular connections and without skimmer records – this later activity was assessed asfraudulent, while daytime activity was considered legitimate.

The first pirate contact recorded in the entire WRTC logs was by 4S7KM during the connection with MB1A at 12:06z; during the following fourteen minutes, this station worked with five other teams, including MB2A at 12:12z directly on the frequency that MB2A was leading at that time (running). By the end of the first hour, MB2A had three pirate connections, while no other team had more than one.

Detailed analysis

The investigation revealed a three-part fraud scheme that favored teams MB2M (originally declared winner) a MB2AFirst, the external station with a relatively strong signal occupied the planned frequency for a longer time just before the start of the race. Second, this station released the free frequency to a specific WRTC team exactly at the moment of the race start (12:00z) – making the identity of the operator of this team known to those who were aware of the scheme. Third, the pirate stations themselves were making connections with WRTC stations, posing as rare multiplier stations, and these contacts were provided to all WRTC teams, but significantly more of them were directed specifically to MB2M.and MB2A.

A specific example of frequency exchange: the call sign EU8E was continuously captured at a frequency of 14003.5 kHz from 11:19z to 11:59:26z in thirty-eight independent skimmer reports. Exactly at 12:00z, MB2M appeared on this frequency and operated there – its very first logged connection for the contest was precisely EU8E. The call sign then never appeared again, did not submit a log, and the only other mention of it in the entire contest field is a verified typo of another call sign. A similar pattern was identified with MB2A (frequency 14002.2 kHz, call sign EV6M) and with MB1I (frekvencie 14007,0 a 21007,0 kHz).

An interesting detail is the mistake made by the pirate operator during one of the earliest contacts – during the contact 4S7KM with MB2A at 12:12z, the operator sent ITU zone 29 instead of zone 41, which a real Sri Lankan station would have sent and which MB2A also recorded in the log. Zone 29 covers Ukraine, Belarus, most of European Russia, Moldova, the Baltic states, and the Caucasus.

The investigation also revealed a problem of excessive connections from 'friends' (cheerleading) – software developed for this rescoring identified call signs that provided one team with an disproportionately large number of the ten possible connections (five bands × two modes), while giving others very few. Eight such call signs were identified and their connections removed from all logs, although the impact on ranking was small – no position was changed.

Disqualified stations, reasons for disqualification

Based on the findings, four teams were disqualified. MB1I (operators E77DX and DJ4MX), MB2A (US2YW and IK4VET), and MB2M (VE3DZ and UW7LL) were disqualified under rule 12.2 for intentionally revealing the team's identity to another person – a rule that explicitly prohibits any form of operator identification before or during the competition, with the possibility of immediate disqualification. The operators of MB1I admitted to what happened and accepted responsibility for the violation. None of the operators of MB2M or MB2A reported any agreed measures.

MB5Q (operators RW7K and KU1CW) was disqualified under rule 12.7 for claiming credit for excessive unverifiable connections – the team's log contained ten multiplier connections, for which there was no trace of a signal on the provided audio recording, although recordings of connections just before and after these disputed connections were clearly audible. Six of these eight call signs are not found in any of the 5,607 logs submitted for evaluation.

Disqualification applies to teams, not to individual members - although different members of the team may have borne varying degrees of responsibility for the actions that led to disqualification.

The investigation also retrospectively examined the logs of WRTC 2023 from Italy and found the same three-part pattern of fraud in favor of the winning team I44W (the same operators VE3DZ and UW7LL) - this year's results, however, were not recalculated.

New results table WRTC 2026

After removing all disputed connections from the logs, the order at the top changed significantly. The originally announced winner dropped out of the top three.

Special awards added to the overall ranking: MB4G (N6MJ, KL9A) received the award for the most multipliers (457) and the highest log accuracy (0.5% error rate). MB5Y (9A6KX, 9A1UN) received the award for the most phone connections (2369), MB5P (LU9ESD, LW5HR) for the most CW connections (2745) and MB5Z (W0AAE, W4IPC) for the best youth team.

Complete summary

Prepočítanie výsledkov WRTC 2026 predstavuje bezprecedentnú udalosť v histórii svetového šampionátu rádioamatérskych tímovThe combination of a public analysis of logs by experienced contestants (LZ4AX, N3QE, KU1CW), technical investigation by the Judging Committee with the support of independent analysts Bill Fehring, W9KKN, and Tim Shopp, N3QE, and finally the open confession of the organizing committee led to the revelation of a three-part fraud scheme: intentional frequency exchange revealing the identity of the operators, fake multiplier connections from pirate stations, and excessive favoritism towards selected teams by 'friendly' callers. The result is the disqualification of four teams(MB1I, MB2A, MB2M, MB5Q) and a new top of the leaderboard led by team MB5O (DJ5MW, DM5EE).The case also revealed the same pattern of fraud in the previous edition of WRTC 2023 in Italy, although this edition was not recalculated.Complete details including all attachments are available in the official PDF document on the site wrtc2026.org.