Announcing 2026 award recipient: Hamlib Project

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).

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.

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 hamlib.github.io.