The World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC) 2030 will take place in Croatia. The decision to allocate the organization was announced by the WRTC Sanctioning Committee on October 3, 2026 during the ceremonial program at the Istra contest Conference in Poreč. The organizer will be Hrvatski Radioamaterski Savez (HRS), i.e. the national radio amateur union of Croatia. The official website of the event also lists northeastern Slavonia as the host region.
For the Croatian amateur radio union, this is the culmination of several months of preparation. HRS officially approved its candidacy already in July 2026 and subsequently presented the intention to the WRTC Sanctioning Committee. The selection of the organizer was part of a process in which the proposed organizing team, time frame, location and ability to prepare a large-scale international event were assessed.
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WRTC as the pinnacle of amateur radio contesting
The WRTC takes place on a four-year cycle and brings together top contestants who qualify for the competition through regional qualifying processes. Each team consists of two operators and the competition itself lasts 24 hours continuously. The organizers create comparable conditions for individual teams so that the result depends as little as possible on the differences between individual stations and as much as possible on the skills of the operators, strategy, teamwork and endurance.
Práve tento princíp odlišuje WRTC od bežných veľkých DX súťaží. V klasickom conteste môže mať rozhodujúci vplyv QTH, height and type of antennas, terrain, local interference level or available power. At WRTC, the organizers try to balance these variables as much as possible. But the previous WRTC in 2026 in Great Britain did not avoid controversy, which led to disqualifications and new result. Subsequently, it also turned out that the WRTC in Italy was no different, and it is here too they adjusted the results additionally.
July 2030 and the IARU HF Championship
WRTC 2030 will take place in July 2030 concurrently with the IARU HF Championship. This is a traditional link between the two events: the WRTC uses the international HF race itself as the competition framework, so that the WRTC teams compete directly in the same 24-hour operating period as the other participants in the IARU HF Championship. The IARU sets this race on the second full weekend in July, from 12:00 UTC on Saturday to 11:59 UTC on Sunday. In 2030, therefore, the competition weekend falls on July 13 and 14; however, the exact organizational details of the WRTC 2030 will be subject to further announcements by the organizers.
Such a solution also has a technical meaning. WRTC is not an isolated demonstration of the work of a few teams, but a competition embedded in real international operation. Operators must work 24 hours a day with changing conditions on the bands, monitor propagation and effectively use two transmitters at the same time. Therefore, not only technical means are decisive, but also band selection, timing of transitions between bands, work with multipliers and the ability to divide tasks between two operators.
Slavonia and the Čepina region
The organizing team will place WRTC 2030 in the northeastern part of Croatia, in the region of Slavonia. The main scene of the amateur radio competition itself is to be the area of Čepina near Osijek. The choice of an inland location is important for the WRTC especially from a technical point of view: when building a large number of comparable competition sites, it is necessary to find sufficiently large areas with suitable conditions for masts, antennas, power supply and logistical support. The official WRTC 2030 website so far publicly lists Slavonia as the host region; the organizing team will publish details about the individual competition stations gradually.
The preparation of field stations will be among the most technically demanding parts of the project. With WRTC, it is not enough to provide functional antennas. Their location, height, power lines, layout of individual stations and protection against mutual interference must be solved in such a way that the conditions between the teams are as comparable as possible.
More than the competition itself
For Croatia, WRTC 2030 also represents an important international presentation. The event will combine amateur radio technology, top sports performance, international cooperation and the regional background of Slavonia. At the same time, it will be a large-scale organizational project for local radio amateurs, which will require technicians, referees, logistic teams, IT infrastructure and a lot of volunteers.
The official communication platform of the project is available at wrtc2030.hr. The website should serve as the main source of information about the organization, the qualification process, the team and the further development of the preparations. The organizing committee also provides a contact address on the website for questions about WRTC 2030 and cooperation. The first qualifying event for WRTC 2030 is to be the 9A DX Contest 2026.
The Croatian organization thus opens another chapter in the history of the WRTC. After the United States, Slovenia, Finland, Brazil, Russia, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, the world team contesting will move to Croatia and the new environment of Slavonia in 2030. For the radio amateur community, it will be interesting to see how the organizers transform the principle of comparable conditions into specific technical solutions for individual competition stations.