Special Canadian call sign VB18FIFA will be among those active around the world from June 1 to July 15 for a World Cup 2018 football Amateur Radio “marathon.” The event will be held during the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. Russia’s IARU member-society SRR is encouraging Amateur Radio organizations to field World-Cup-related call signs, preferably with “FIFA” (or “FWC” for finalist countries) as a suffix. An award for working FIFA stations is available from SRR online.

Russia will have 32 call signs on the air for the event, with R18 prefixes suffixes spotlighting participating countries or cities where matches are held. For example, R18ARG honors Argentina, and R18SWE honors Sweden.

Eleven call signs will represent cities where the matches are held, such as RC18KA for Kaliningrad and RC18SO for Sochi. Two headquarters call signs will be R18HQ and R18FWC. Organizers say that as of April 15, 76 FIFA member countries have indicated plans to participate in the event.

For more information, contact Coordinator Aliy Kuysokov, UA6YW. — Thanks to The Daily DX for some information