so ive been licensed about 8 months now and finally feel like im getting comfortable enough on HF to actually try chasing some DX instead of just working the local nets. somebody at my club mentioned DXCC and i went down a rabbit hole on the ARRL website for like two hours and now im more confused than when i started lol

basically my question is — does every QSO count toward DXCC or is it only certain ones? like i worked a station in the Canary Islands last week on 20m and i was pretty stoked about that, logged it and everything. does that count as an entity? and what about states, is WAS completely separate from DXCC or do they overlap somehow. also heard someone mention WAZ and i dont even know where to start with that one

i know i probably sound like a total newbie (because i am) but any help is appreciated, the ARRL page kind of assumes you already know what youre talking about

dont worry, it took me a while to wrap my head around all of it too when i started chasing awards. so the short version — DXCC is based on ARRL's list of entities, which is not quite the same as countries. there's currently 340 or so entities and you need confirmed QSOs with 100 of them to get the basic DXCC award. Canary Islands would count as EA8 which is its own entity separate from mainland Spain, so yeah that one should be good for you. the confirmation part is the key thing though, used to be all paper QSLs but now most people use Logbook of the World which the ARRL runs. you upload your log, the other station uploads theirs, and if the details match it becomes a confirmed credit automatically. WAZ is totally different, thats a CQ magazine award for working all 40 zones as defined by the CQ zone map. and WAS is working all 50 states, which the ARRL also runs but its completely separate tracking from DXCC. so yeah you can be working toward all three at once which is kind of addicting honestly

the Canary Islands one is a good get actually, EA8 counts as its own entity which trips up a lot of people. one thing that helped me early on was just downloading the DXCC entity list as a PDF and keeping it open while i was logging, that way you can cross reference as you go. also get on LoTW as soon as you can if youre not already, some DX stations only confirm via LoTW and you dont want to be scrambling for QSLs later when you're trying to apply for the award. club log is worth looking at too, a lot of the big DX expeditions upload there first