All major contests report detailed statistics for the benefit of contest participants, who want to know how they did in the contest. I compiled reported totals of logs submitted for several major contests. These numbers are not entirely consistent, because some contests include check logs and disqualified entries in the results, and some don't. The most recent numbers that I could find are reported, but these are not all in the same calendar year. I didn't report all contests, and it's quite possible that I missed contests that deserve to be on this list. (If so, let me know and I'll edit them in.) In some cases I had to add numbers to arrive at a total; I trust my addition, but I could have missed numbers that should have been included in the total. (Thanks to electronics-notes.com for giving me a list to start with.)
The list is sorted by logs submitted. I would think that the order of contests in the list would fluctuate quite a bit when comparing different years.
(In the table, "W/E" means "weekend".)
Rank |
Contest |
Dates |
Results Year |
Logs Submitted |
1 |
CQ-WorldWide (CW) |
Last full W/E November |
2019 |
7,821 |
2 |
CQ-WorldWide (SSB) |
Last full W/E October |
2019 |
7,741 |
3 |
CQ-Worked PrefiXes (WPX)(SSB) |
Last full W/E March |
2020 |
7,604 |
4 |
CQ-Worked PrefiXes (WPX) (CW) |
Last full W/E May |
2020 |
5,912 |
5 |
Russian DX Contest (SSB/CW) |
Third full W/E March |
2020 |
5,212 |
6 |
IARU-HF Championship (SSB/CW) |
Second full W/E July |
2019 |
4,354 |
7 |
ARRL DX Contest (CW) |
Third full W/E February |
2019 |
4,136 |
8 |
CQ-WorldWide (RTTY) |
Fourth full W/E September |
2019 |
3,103 |
9 |
CQ-Worked PrefiXes (WPX)(RTTY) |
Second full W/E February |
2020 |
3,088 |
10 |
ARRL DX Contest (SSB) |
First full W/E March |
2019 |
3,062 |
11 |
Island On The Air (SSB/CW) |
Last full W/E July |
2020 |
2,237 |
12 |
All Asia DX (CW) |
Third full W/E June |
2019 |
1,543 |
13 |
Worked All Europe-DX (CW) |
Second full W/E August |
2019 |
1,187 |
14 |
Worked All Europe-DX (RTTY) |
Second full W/E November |
2019 |
1,131 |
15 |
Worked All Europe-DX (SSB) |
Second full W/E September |
2019 |
953 |
16 |
All Asia (SSB) |
First full W/E September |
2019 |
870 |