The Amateur Radio Software Award (ARSA) committee is proud to announce that the Hamlib project has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 Amateur Radio Software Award. This year’s award honors the outstanding work of the current core developers: Nate Bargmann (N0NB), George Baltz (N3GB), Daniele Forsi (IU5HKX), and Mikael Nousiainen (OH3BHX). The annual ARSA award recognizes software projects that enhance amateur radio and promote innovation, freedom, and openness in amateur radio software development. Hamlib was selected for its long‑standing and essential role in enabling software to interface with transceivers and other controllable devices. For more than a quarter century, Hamlib has provided a unified, reliable way to send control commands and read device status. Despite its age, the project remains actively maintained, with new radios and devices added regularly. Hamlib continues to be the go-to library for both established and emerging amateur radio applications. About Hamlib Hamlib provides stable, flexible shared libraries that simplify the development of amateur radio equipment control applications. Many modern transceivers include serial (RS‑232, USB, etc.) or Ethernet/Wi‑Fi/Bluetooth interfaces that allow software‑based control. Hamlib abstracts these interfaces, making it significantly easier for application developers to interact with radios, rotators, amplifiers, and other controllable devices. From WSJT‑X and Fldigi to JS8Call, Log4OM, and CQRlog, today’s widely used amateur radio applications are built on Hamlib. Nate Bargmann (N0NB) notes that “over the lifetime of the project there have been several principal developers. Its founder is Frank Singleton, VK4FCS. Stéphane Fillod, F8CFE, and until about a year ago Mike Black, W9MDB (SK), were successive principal developers.” Bargmann reports that the current long‑term support branch will receive the 4.7.1 release in the coming weeks, adding support for new radio models and improving existing ones. Work on Hamlib 5 is also underway. The new major version will introduce some backward‑incompatible changes to isolate internal structures and align with modern best practices, including breaking the C ABI. Discussions are ongoing regarding potential API changes, and feedback from client developers is encouraged. “There is no set date for a release of Hamlib 5.0.0,” Bargmann adds, “but hopefully within the next year seems possible.” Learn more about Hamlib at https://hamlib.github.io/. Special Event Station To celebrate Hamlib’s selection as the 2026 award recipient—and to encourage nominations for the 2027 Amateur Radio Software Award—the ARSA committee will operate the special event station K7A from November 27 through December 7, 2026. About the Amateur Radio Software Award The Amateur Radio Software Award is an annual international award recognizing software projects that enhance amateur radio and promote innovation, freedom, and openness in amateur radio software development. Award Committee Claus Niesen, AE0S (since 2020) Kun Lin, N7DMR (since 2020) Rich Gordon, K0EB (since 2021) Sebastian Delmont, KI2D (since 2026) For nomination guidelines, event schedules, and information about past winners, visit https://arsaward.com.
On behalf of the project, it is a very pleasant surprise. To all that have been involved in any manner, thank you!
@W2NC Hamlib has been a Linux first project since its inception. I routinely build on Debian and Arch Linux. Cross-compilation for Windows began fairly early on and that is still how the Hamlib supplied Windows binaries are built. Continuous Integration on GitHub tests MacOS as well. On occasion I do test on FreeBSD and others test other BSD flavors. I know that George, N3GB, builds on OpenSuSE Tumbleweed which has the bleeding edge tools to find issues with new compiler releases, etc. It's a large team effort, some of whom I seldom, if ever, hear from, which is a good thing. The easiest way to get started as a tester is to visit the daily snapshots page: https://hamlib.sourceforge.net/snapshots-4.7/ Be aware that currently I'm not aware of any end-user application that works with the Master Branch snapshots.
