North American Sprint, CW

Four-hour single-operator sprint on 80/40/20 m only. The QSY rule -- work one station per solicitation, then move at least 1 kHz -- makes it the most tactically demanding format in contesting.

Rules at ncjweb.comThe rules are the sponsor's. This page holds the dates and the facts.

When it runs

Dates set by the sponsor each year (no derivable rule)

0000Z → 0359Z

Times are UTC, as the sponsor states them.

The sponsor announces these dates a year at a time and there is no rule to derive, so this calendar holds only the years they have published: 2026.

Next runnings

The sponsor sets this date each year rather than by a rule, and has published through 2026. Years they have not announced are absent rather than guessed.

Operating

Modes: CW
Bands: 80m40m20m
Exchange: Other station's call + your call + serial number + name + state/province/country ('DX' outside North America)
Logs: Cabrillo · due 7 days after the end
Who can enter: Anyone, anywhere.
NCJ Sprint rule 1: 'Any amateur radio licensee may enter.' Object is for North American stations to work as many amateurs as possible and for non-NA stations to work as many NA stations as possible.

Where this comes from

Checked against the sponsor: Yes. The rule on this page was read off National Contest Journal (NCJ)'s own published rules. Link last confirmed 2026-08-11.
What the source says: ncjweb.com/Sprint-Rules.pdf, 'Rules: 2026 North American Sprint (CW/RTTY)', rule 4 Contest Periods: 'CW: 0000 until 0359 UTC, February 8, 2026' and, under 'September Contests (NOTE CW DATE SHIFT)', 'CW: 0000 until 0359 UTC, September 13, 2026'. 'These four contests are entirely separate 4-hour Sprints.'
Recorded caveats: Encoded as 'manual' deliberately. NCJ publishes explicit dates per year and flagged 2026 September with 'NOTE CW DATE SHIFT', so there is no stable derivable recurrence to encode. 2026 happens to land on the 2nd Sunday of February and the 2nd Sunday of September, but that pattern is NOT a rule NCJ states -- re-read the rules PDF each year.

Something wrong? How to report it — a link to the sponsor's own page is all it takes.

Take it with you

Subscribe (iCal)This record as JSON

Subscribe (iCal) carries this contest's runnings for the next twelve months as UTC instants and keeps them current. Apple Calendar, Outlook and Thunderbird take this address directly. Its identifiers are stable across deploys, so re-subscribing does not duplicate anything: https://contestclock.com/api/ics?id=ncj-sprint-cw

Google has no working one-click subscribe. Paste that address into Settings → Add calendar → From URL. Google then polls it on its own schedule, often 8–24 hours, and that cannot be forced — so use Add to Google Calendar above if you want the next running in your calendar now.