Why video podcasts are winning in 2026 (and audio isn't going anywhere)

Two numbers landed this year that reset how anyone should think about the podcast market. YouTube has passed 1 billion monthly podcast viewers globally. Spotify's video-podcast library grew from about 100,000 shows in 2023 to over 330,000 by February 2025. Apple Podcasts, which held out on video for years, started supporting video episodes by early 2026.

If you'd told anyone in 2020 that YouTube would be the biggest podcast platform on earth by mid-decade, they'd have laughed. It is now, by a lot.

The scale of the shift

The headline numbers are hard to ignore. In the US, 42% of monthly podcast listeners name YouTube as their platform of choice, followed by Spotify at 15% and Apple Podcasts at 7%. 53% of US podcast listeners now say they opt for shows they can watch, not just hear. Spotify has passed 270 million users who have watched a video podcast at least once.

None of this happened because listeners suddenly wanted TV. It happened because creators finally figured out that YouTube's recommendation engine surfaces "someone talking for an hour" better than any audio-only directory does, and that the same recording session can produce a video for the algorithm and an audio feed for people who want to keep listening while doing something else.

The catch, most "video podcast" listening is still audio

Here's the twist that gets missed. Even on YouTube, a large share of "podcast viewership" happens with the phone locked in a pocket. YouTube Premium users get background play. YouTube Music streams podcast audio without the video. A creator whose show is filmed for YouTube might see the majority of their consumption happen without anyone looking at the video at all.

Video is the discovery format. It's what gets a show recommended, clipped, shared, and quoted. But the listening is still mostly audio. Which is why every serious video podcast still ships an RSS feed to podcast players, because that's where the loyal audience lives once they've found you.

What this means if you're a listener

Three things worth adjusting to.

First, discovery is shifting to video-first platforms. If you're finding new shows the traditional way, Apple charts, Spotify recommendations, Overcast recommendation lists, you're missing where the discovery volume actually is right now. Even if you never watch a full episode, the YouTube algorithm is where new voices are surfacing fastest. It's worth spending fifteen minutes a week on YouTube for clips even if your listening happens elsewhere.

Second, the same show often exists in two places. A show like the Vergecast, Waveform, Decoder, Hard Fork, or My First Million ships an audio version and a video version. The audio version usually has better chaptering and more consistent audio levelling because it's mixed for headphones, not phone speakers. Which is why a lot of listeners still prefer the RSS/podcast-app version for the actual listen and treat YouTube as the trailer.

Third, when you do want the video, you shouldn't have to leave your podcast app to get it. Podtastic's new Jump to Video button drops you into the video version of the current episode at the exact timestamp you were listening at, useful for shows where a visual demo lands mid-episode (product reviews, whiteboard explanations, guest reactions).

Where audio still wins

There's a specific type of listening that video actively degrades. Long-form interviews on the commute. Deep-dive analysis on a walk. Anything where you're doing something else and the podcast is the second layer. Video breaks that pattern, either you look at it (and stop doing the thing), or you don't (and pay for premium so it doesn't stop when the screen locks).

Audio also has better formats for skimming. A good podcast summary tells you what a two-hour episode is about in a paragraph. A good chapter list lets you jump to the interesting section without watching a ninety-second intro sting. Video's tooling for this is worse right now, YouTube's chapter timestamps are hit-or-miss and its transcript UI is a side panel most people never open. Audio players that surface AI summaries and topic navigation have a real advantage on any commute-length episode.

The likely direction

The rational bet for the next couple of years is that the format wars are over and the answer is "both". A show gets recorded once and ships to YouTube for discovery + Spotify for the retention product + an RSS feed for the loyalists. Podcast apps that treat video as an occasional companion to audio, not a replacement, will fit that reality better than the ones that pick a side.

If you're a listener whose default is still headphones, the good news is nothing has to change. Every serious podcast still ships audio. The best of them ship the AI summary and topic list too, which is where audio quietly widens its lead over anything you're doing with a video-first player.

Listen smarter with Podtastic

Listen to more of what you love. Podtastic is a fully featured podcast player for iOS and Android, built around Smart Features (the AI features) and Audio Enhancements (deterministic DSP tuned for spoken-word audio):

• Smart Summaries — AI summaries of every podcast and episode so you know what's coming before you hit play
• Smart Topics — key topics surfaced across your favourite shows so you can jump straight to what matters
• Smart Playback — your queue fills itself based on what you actually listen to
• Smart Skip — auto-skips commonly-skipped sections of an episode (intros, recaps, asides), powered by AI topic detection plus aggregated listening data; a single tap on any control surface jumps you to the next Smart Topic on demand
• Skip Silence — auto-removes silences from speech so episodes flow without dragging
• Enhance Voices — a gentle EQ and compression preset that keeps voices clear in any room

Join the waitlist at podtastic.app to get early access.