Modified date: Apr 17, 2026Every April 18, something quietly remarkable happens on the bands. From a small QRP station in a backyard in Yorkshire to a multi-operator contest setup in the Pacific, tens of thousands of licensed operators fire up their rigs for the same reason: to mark the day, in 1925, when a handful of radio pioneers met in Paris and founded the International Amateur Radio Union.A hundred and one years later, we are still here. Still on the air. Still listening.This year’s World Amateur Radio Day comes with a theme that feels particularly well chosen: “Advancing the Spirit of Amateur Radio Through Innovation”. Coming right after the IARU’s centenary in 2025, it is less a celebration of the past and more an invitation to think about what the next hundred years of amateur radio might look like.World Amateur Radio Day brings hams on the air across all three IARU regions.The day we almost lost the shortwavesIt is worth remembering why April 18 matters at all. In the early 1920s, amateur experimenters had just discovered that the “useless” short wavelengths could, in fact, carry signals around the world. Commercial and government interests noticed. Fast. There was a very real risk that amateurs would be squeezed out of the spectrum entirely.The IARU was founded precisely to prevent that. Two years after Paris, at the 1927 International Radiotelegraph Conference, amateur radio was granted the allocations we still use today: 160, 80, 40, 20 and 10 meters. Every contact you make on those bands is, in a sense, a direct inheritance from that fight.Early amateur experimenters proved that shortwave could circle the globe — and fought to keep it.Innovation is not new to usThe 2026 theme is sometimes read as a