A year in numbers – 2025

Amateur radio continues to evolve and the RSGB, in turn, develops how it supports current radio amateurs and reaches out to new audiences. In this feature we celebrate some great achievements, in which RSGB HQ staff have often led the way.

The video above shows the highlights whilst the fuller story and numbers are shared below. You can also read the feature and see the infographic in the March RadCom.

Next month’s RadCom will show in detail the work of the RSGB committees and other specialist volunteers.

RSGB 2025 Convention

Over the course of the weekend, we welcomed 450 in-person Convention attendees. We also continued the hybrid model of providing a selection of free content via a YouTube livestream, which received 9.4k views – a 17% increase from last year. A dedicated team of HQ staff and technical volunteers produced 15 hours of livestream content, including 24 live and pre-recorded interviews, some lively video chats with people in the bar about the benefits of being an RSGB member, as well as presentations for the online attendees to enjoy. Preparing this level of engaging content took months of preparation.

Reports show that 37% of views were from outside the United Kingdom, reflecting the high regard in which the RSGB’s content is held across the world, and that we’re providing accessible content for our international members.

Knowing that polar modulation was very relevant, we invited Hans Summers, G0UPL to present at the Convention. I also chaired an interview on the topic with Hans, Mike Walker, VA3MW from Flex Radio and RSGB Board Chair Stewart Bryant, G3YSX. The presentation and recorded interview between them have had nearly 6,700 views online and sparked a lot of interesting discussion.

We introduced two very successful panel discussions at last year’s Convention, for which the RSGB Communications Manager led the preparations. These covered the topics of how to support clubs to thrive, and how to encourage more women into amateur radio. Both created significant interest.

Our social media posts before, during and after the Convention had almost 386k views, including nearly 3k post likes and reactions on Facebook – a 20% increase from last year. The #RSGBconvention was mentioned in 134 posts on X, which equates to an audience reach of nearly 0.9 million accounts. This level of engagement demonstrates the interest in our flagship event.

Since the Convention, we’ve released 15 presentations and interviews on our YouTube channel that were either on the livestream, or which fit our strategic priorities of membership, growth, spectrum and licensing. All these resources have received great feedback, and other presentations will be released later this year as a member benefit.

The RSGB app

In October 2025 I was delighted to launch the RSGB mobile app, via the Apple App and Google Play stores. Soon after the launch, we saw the app downloaded more than 7,000 times across 50 countries, demonstrating the demand for RSGB publications worldwide. We have over 350 editions of our digital publications in the RSGB app which also enables members to search the archive, and as I write this feature we are also releasing sample editions of RadCom Basics and RadCom Plus into the app.

“The RSGB app…easy
and fast to use – a great asset!”

The ability to include clickable URLs in RadCom features, link a review or offer with an associated video or shop discount, and provide content in an accessible way for members to read in a way that suits them, has been one of my goals for a long time. In 2025 I was delighted to see that come to fruition.

RadCom 

During 2025, RadCom continued to provide a diverse range of content covering almost all facets of amateur radio. Amongst these were 51 technical features.

New products are always of interest to our readers, and we highlighted 44 of these in our ‘New products’ page and included 23 detailed product reviews. The magazine included 53 reports from Special Interest Groups, 26 book reviews, and 170 reports from clubs in the ‘Around your Region’ section of the magazine.

We welcome letters from readers on the topics covered in the magazine and published 116 of those last year.

Videos

In 2025, there were over 430 videos available for people across the world to choose from on our YouTube channel, including 64 new releases. The combination of videos, livestreams and shorts amounted to over 126,102 views throughout the year. We also gained a further 1.2k subscribers to the channel.

Our ‘shorts’ continue to be popular with over 12.6k views, and we’ve widened our range by creating shorts at events such as the National Hamfest or at the RSGB National Radio Centre. These enable us to demonstrate in real time what RSGB representatives are doing to engage with visitors and practical activities. We’ve seen how popular this type of content is amongst younger audiences, with over 30% of the views being from people under the age of 34.

In 2025, we also began sharing YouTube shorts that had been made for RadCom product reviews, so people can click through from the review in the RSGB app and go straight to watch the video. These will become a firmer feature in our cross-channel comms over the coming year.

Being social

In 2025, we saw a definite shift in engagement on our social media channels, as radio amateurs moved away from X and concentrated more on Facebook. We also launched on Instagram in December, partly in response to feedback from younger radio amateurs, but also to fulfil our longstanding plans to increase the profile of amateur radio with individuals and organisations in the STEM and maker communities.

On Facebook, we saw a 25% increase in new followers, over 9 million content views and an 88.8% increase in link clicks on our posts. Our reels are key to reaching new audiences on this platform and saw over 352k views of RSGB-released reels.

We continue to support active schools, clubs and individual radio amateurs on X and, whilst we’ve seen a decrease in activity on that platform, we’ve still gained over 1k new followers and seen 34.3k post engagements.

In just one month at the end of 2025, we shared 30 posts and gained 478 followers on our new Instagram profile. This content received over 12.3k post views, 525 post interactions and through it we reached over 1k accounts.

Being on social media is important for engaging with members and non-members, and the RSGB Comms team continues to review and develop content to reflect the RSGB’s strategic priorities.

“Welcome to Instagram, it’s great to see you here” – Bracknell ARC

Amateur radio in the media

Our media monitoring agency helps us to keep track of mentions in the mainstream media on amateur radio, the RSGB or our special campaigns. In 2025, there were 310 mentions of the RSGB on TV, Radio, digital/print news, podcasts, personal blogs and other online news. This amounts to a potential audience reach of 8,156,968 people.

Within this, radio broadcasts reached nearly 2.53 million people. This has included coverage gained from press releases distributed by the Comms team about the RSGB National Radio Centre winning the 2025 Sir Arthur Clarke Education and Outreach Team Award on BBC Radio Three Counties Radio (21.3k listeners) and the RSGB President Bob Beebe, GU4YOX talking on BBC Radio Guernsey about his role and the RSGB (3k listeners).

We have also been pleased to see national, local and trade publications picking up on RSGB news. For example, supported by the Comms team, RSGB Youth Chair and School Youth Champion, Chris Aitken, MM0WIC, wrote an article on the value of amateur radio clubs in school and the curriculum. This was published in the TES magazine (formerly the Times Education Supplement) and reached around 233.7k people within the education sector.

Local news coverage has included the NWE Mail sharing details of Furness Amateur Radio Society’s participation in the RSGB LoRa balloon challenge (13k online reach). Coverage in trade news has included a piece in Model Engineer and Workshop magazine (21k readers).

In wider amateur radio news, the ARISS contact with Scout groups in Leamington Spa reached a variety of news outlets including Midlands Today TV, BBC news online, the OJ Borg show on BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio Birmingham.

Events and campaigns 

As part of the Society’s strategic priorities, HQ team members were very involved in several campaigns through the year, either spearheading activities themselves or supporting volunteers and teams. These included British Science Week (BSW), National Coding Week’s LoRa Challenge, YOTA Month and JOTA, to name but a few.

The HQ team created extra web pages, videos and content as appropriate for each of these campaigns, to ensure maximum publicity and engagement. Nearly 5,000 people followed links to the web pages created for the LoRa Challenge, showing the interest in this new Outreach team activity.

For BSW in March, further resources were developed under the leadership of RSGB British Science Week Coordinator Ian Neal, G7IGN and we were delighted that the RSGB had an activity created by Outreach team member John Hislop, G7OHO accepted into the official BSW Community Pack. The RSGB Comms team supported this campaign across all our channels and the press releases sent out gained coverage in the Wokingham Paper, Reading Chronicle, Burton Mail and Derby Telegraph, with a combined potential reach of 67.5k people.

RSGB National Radio Centre

The RSGB National Radio Centre (NRC) based at Bletchley Park is an ideal venue to introduce and demonstrate amateur radio. In 2025, we proudly announced that the NRC was recognised in Tripadvisor’s Travellers’ Choice Awards. Winners of this award are in the top 10% of listings around the world on Tripadvisor. It recognises the passion and dedication of our NRC volunteers, and the fantastic role they play in promoting amateur radio.

With its flagship station GB3RS, it can demonstrate both the traditional aspects of amateur radio (such as FM, CW and SSB QSOs on LF/HF/VHF) through to the newer digital modes including FT8, D-Star, DMR and communication via both polar orbiting and the QO-100 geostationary satellite.

The 70-strong NRC team is led by HQ staff member Martyn Baker, G0MGB and includes thirteen STEM ambassadors. The NRC was open for 359 days last year and welcomed over 74,000 visitors including 858 radio amateurs from around the world. The team members gave 10,794 hours between them to share their love of amateur radio with the public. NRC volunteers encourage visitors to go on the air, under supervision where appropriate, and during the year 5,449 QSOs were made by GB3RS.

The significance of the work done at the NRC was recognised by the British Interplanetary Society, which gave the 2025 Sir Arthur Clarke Education and Outreach Team Award to the NRC team. The award was given “For inspiring all generations about Amateur Satellites by providing a unique insight into the world of radio communications”.

As well as welcoming the public each day, the NRC took part in a variety of events throughout the year. These included participation in two Bletchley Park 1940s weekends, the Ninth International Enigma Reloaded event, and an Arkwright Scholars amateur radio licence training day. Martyn and his team are always keen to support youngsters to get on the air and, as part of that, they hosted GB25YOTA for two days during YOTA Month and took part in two ‘Build a radio’ events sponsored by the Radio Communications Foundation to encourage young people to try practical amateur radio activities.

New in 2025, a series of five ‘Find the SPY Transmitters’ and Morse decoding events were held during the summer, which proved very popular with families. Many radio clubs visited throughout the year and students from Cambridge University studying ‘A History of Radio’ were hosted on a dedicated lecture and practical day. A further two highlights were when the NRC was invited to give a series of talks about radio in the new Bletchley Park Auditorium, and when in conjunction with senior RSGB representatives the NRC hosted a private visit by Callum Anderson, MP for Buckingham and Bletchley, to discuss the impact of electrical interference noise on radio communications. RSGB members can download a free entry voucher for Bletchley Park and the NRC, and 798 members made the most of this benefit last year.

GB2RS

GB2RS is the Society’s news service. In 2025, 81 newsreaders from across the UK made 77 broadcasts every Sunday, spanning 10 different amateur bands from HF to SHF and in nine different modes. The podcast at gb2rs.podbean.com is popular, with 320 listeners on average each week and around 16,400 downloads across the year.

The HQ editorial team produced 51 scripts in 2025 which resulted in over 25 hours of diverse content for each broadcast outlet. In addition to the on-air listenership, around 4,000 members are signed up to receive the bulletin by email.

GB2RS has been on the air since 1955, and 2025 marked its 70^th anniversary. The call sign GB70RS was operated by many GB2RS Newsreaders throughout the year. HQ staff supported the anniversary with publicity, arranging a Tonight@8 webinar, sharing Newsreader stories, and hosting the call sign at the RSGB National Radio Centre.

The full GB2RS report will feature in April’s RadCom alongside the committee reports.

Membership

HQ staff regularly review the membership offering and communications. In 2025, we were proud to partner with six museums, offering RSGB members a 20-50% discount off entry. Over 200 members took advantage of this new benefit and were very enthusiastic about its value. These partnerships will continue in 2026.

It was great to see nearly 1,700 people joined or rejoined the RSGB in 2025. In addition, 20 clubs affiliated or reaffiliated with the RSGB.

The RSGB Membership Secretary is the key point of contact for membership enquiries, and she deals with a wide variety of questions and requests every day. 

Books and products

During 2025 we introduced over 30 new books and products. By the end of the year, the RSGB shop had shipped 27,000 items covering 310 different products, fulfilling 10,000 orders.

Members can take advantage of an array of benefits, including product discounts. Over 400 members who subscribed to ‘membership benefits’ mailings redeemed RSGB discount vouchers on a large variety of books. In addition, over 200 members took advantage of member-only special offers, such as the BHI headsets or the Momobeam Antenna.

Exams

In 2025, 2,783 exams were booked with a total of 2,705 candidates taking an exam.

Single-handedly the RSGB Exam Secretary administers the whole exam process for each candidate from the first exam enquiry, through to the booking process, entering of candidate details and the creation of exams. She is also involved in the smooth communication between candidates, remote invigilators and club exam officials where required, as well as the issuing of results. In addition, she also answers exam enquiries on a large range of topics, including special assistance.

Behind the scenes

Making all of this happen have been our 18 very busy staff members, many of whom work part-time. They’ve sent and received far more emails than we can count, and handled hundreds of IT Helpdesk tickets on a range of topics. They’ve also made and received over 20,000 phone calls, being the friendly voice to thousands of new and existing members, as well as radio amateurs seeking help and advice, both in the UK and worldwide.

Our finance team were also kept busy, and as part of their work processed 101,243 customer payments – including exams, RadCom advertising and trade sales, as well as monthly direct debit membership payments.

Our website had over one million unique views and we continued to update and streamline information as our activities grew.

The HQ team work closely with, and support, the hundreds of RSGB volunteers without whom the Society would be unable to provide its range of expert amateur radio services. We were delighted to recognise the volunteers’ contribution by sending out 663 volunteer badges and thank-you letters at the end of the year.

Looking ahead

There are so many great things to celebrate and there are many more that happen, quietly, each day. I would like to thank the RSGB staff for the fantastic work they do and for the positive spirit in which they do it.

Steve Thomas, M1ACB

RSGB General Manager

gm.dept@rsgb.org.uk

Category: RSGB Strategic Priorities