Copyright © 2021, Oxford University PressMotta, Sara E.Kajava, J. J. E.Giustini, M.Williams, D. R. A.Del Santo, M.Fender, R.Green, D. A.Heywood, I.Rhodes, L.Segreto, A.Sivakoff, G.Woudt, P. A.2022-02-142022-02-142021-02-24Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 503(1): 152-161(2021)0035-8711https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/503/1/152/6149165http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12666/538The Galactic black hole transient GRS 1915+105 is famous for its markedly variable X-ray and radio behaviour, and for being the archetypal galactic source of relativistic jets. It entered an X-ray outburst in 1992 and has been active ever since. Since 2018 GRS 1915+105 has declined into an extended low-flux X-ray plateau, occasionally interrupted by multiwavelength flares. Here, we report the radio and X-ray properties of GRS 1915+105 collected in this new phase, and compare the recent data to historic observations. We find that while the X-ray emission remained unprecedentedly low for most of the time following the decline in 2018, the radio emission shows a clear mode change half way through the extended X-ray plateau in 2019 June: from low flux (∼3 mJy) and limited variability, to marked flaring with fluxes two orders of magnitude larger. GRS 1915+105 appears to have entered a low-luminosity canonical hard state, and then transitioned to an unusual accretion phase, characterized by heavy X-ray absorption/obscuration. Hence, we argue that a local absorber hides from the observer the accretion processes feeding the variable jet responsible for the radio flaring. The radio–X-ray correlation suggests that the current low X-ray flux state may be a signature of a super-Eddington state akin to the X-ray binaries SS433 or V404 Cyg.engAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/AccretionAccretion DiscsBlack Hole PhysicsStars: jetsX rays: binariesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/article10.1093/mnras/stab5111365-2966http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000271http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100011033http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100012818http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100005184http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000781info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess