The 63rd meet­ing of the IARU Admin­is­tra­tive Coun­cil (AC) was held in per­son Octo­ber 4–5, 2025 in Sal­vador de Bahia, Brazil just pri­or to the IARU Region 2 Gen­er­al Conference.

The IARU offi­cers and region rep­re­sen­ta­tives pre­sent­ed reports high­light­ing IARU’s core respon­si­bil­i­ty of spec­trum defense and glob­al pro­mo­tion of the Ama­teur and Ama­teur Satel­lite Ser­vices, not­ing IARU is for­tu­nate to have a host of vol­un­teer sub­ject mat­ter experts who rep­re­sent our posi­tions at the ITU and region­al tele­com orga­ni­za­tions. IARU always seeks addi­tion­al qual­i­fied sub­ject mat­ter experts in var­i­ous areas who are able to serve in a vol­un­tary capacity.

Reports were received from the IARU Satel­lite Advi­sor Hans Blondeel Tim­mer­man, PB2T; Elec­tro­mag­net­ic Com­pat­i­bil­i­ty (EMC) Coor­di­na­tor Dr. Mar­tin Sach, G8KDF; Intrud­er Watch & Mon­i­tor­ing Ser­vice Coor­di­na­tor Gas­par Miró, EA6AMM; and Bea­con Coor­di­na­tor Peter Jen­nings, VE3SUN.

Most of the meet­ing was devot­ed to a dis­cus­sion of the next steps for IARU restruc­tur­ing. On July 29, 2025, the AC replied to com­ments from mem­ber soci­eties on a con­sul­ta­tion doc­u­ment, not­ing it antic­i­pat­ed an update on the key points iden­ti­fied in the reply by the end of Sep­tem­ber, 2025. This meet­ing was the first oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­sid­er next steps and an exten­sive review of the cur­rent and antic­i­pat­ed spec­trum defense demands and mon­e­tary costs was ini­ti­at­ed. A review of the exist­ing IARU con­sti­tu­tion, last amend­ed on May 9, 1989, iden­ti­fied areas where revi­sion may pro­mote our future spec­trum defense effort.  The AC con­tin­ues its work in this area and will inform mem­ber soci­eties and solic­it feed­back as this work progresses.

The AC reviewed the cur­rent IARU WRC-27 posi­tion paper for the ama­teur and ama­teur satel­lite ser­vices and will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the var­i­ous WRC-27 agen­da top­ics that could pose a poten­tial impact. The ITU has announced WRC-27 will be held 18 Octo­ber to 12 Novem­ber, 2025 in Shang­hai, Chi­na. In oth­er ITU mat­ters the ITU Plenipo­ten­tiary Con­fer­ence will be held in Doha, Qatar in 2026. The “Plenipot” deter­mines the poli­cies, direc­tion and activ­i­ties of the ITU, as well as elect­ing the posi­tions at the sec­re­tari­at, name­ly the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, the Deputy Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, and the Direc­tors of the Radio­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Stan­dard­iza­tion, and Devel­op­ment Bureau.

The World Ama­teur Radio Day theme for 2026 “Advanc­ing the Spir­it of Ama­teur Radio Through Inno­va­tion” was approved. This on-the-air event, held annu­al­ly on April 18, rec­og­nizes the day in 1925 when the Inter­na­tion­al Ama­teur Radio Union was formed in Paris.

Mem­bers attend­ing the meet­ing were IARU Pres­i­dent Tim Ellam, VE6SH/G4HUA; Vice Pres­i­dent Thomas Wrede, DF2OO; Sec­re­tary Joel Har­ri­son, W5ZN; Syl­vain Azar­i­an, F4GKR, Pres­i­dent, and vir­tu­al­ly Mats Espling, SM6EAN, Sec­re­tary, IARU Region 1; George Gorsline, VE3YV, Pres­i­dent, and Rod Stafford, W6ROD, Sec­re­tary, IARU Region 2; and Wis­nu Wid­ja­ja, YB0AZ, Chair­man, and Ken Yamamo­to, JA1CJP, Sec­re­tary, IARU Region 3. Also par­tic­i­pat­ing at the invi­ta­tion of the AC were Gus­ta­vo de Faria Fran­co, PT2ADM, Jose Arturo Moli­na, YS1MS, and Ramón San­toyo, XE1KK, from Region 2; and Rick Rod­er­ick, K5UR, ARRL President.