Edison Research at SSRS has just published its Q1 2026 Top 25 podcasts in the UK, from Edison Podcast Metrics. This is their regular quarterly survey of UK podcast listeners. A reminder that this chart is based on at least 2,000 weekly podcast consumers in the UK. Respondent data is collated throughout the full quarter to ensure the data is as fresh as possible.
The top 4 podcasts are unchanged in order, with Newscast jumping a couple of places in this survey, and Americast jumping into the top ten for the first time as well.
The other notable new entry here is the ZOE Science & Nutrition podcast which arrives in the Top 25 for the first time. And there are three football podcasts now comfortably in the Top 25, with The Rest is Football, leading The Overlap and Stick to Football. It was interesting to note that all three were represented at last week’s Podcast Show. The Rest is Football will of course be going to Netflix for the duration of the World Cup, while Global was highlighting their acquisition of The Overlap in a session that also included The Fellas which they have also bought.
As ever, I find it useful to place these rankings in context over time. So here’s how they’ve performed compared with last quarter and over time.
We also see three re-entries from Saving Grace, The Therapy Crouch and The Mel Robbins Podcast.
And this means we have four podcasts drop out of the Top 25: RedHanded, ShxtsNGigs, No Such Thing as a Fish and The Infinite Monkey Cage (which hasn’t published new episodes since Christmas).
Here’s an animation of the Top 25 UK podcasts over time:
Note that subscribers to Edison Podcast Metrics have access to additional data including demographic and reach data.
At The Podcast Show last week, Gabriel Soto, Senior Director of Research at Edison Research and Ollie Chadwick, Regional Director, UK & Ireland at AdsWizz presented some of Edison Research’s most recent findings, previewing t heir UK Podcast Consumer 2026 report. In particular, they looked at how reach works within the confines of the long tail in podcasting.
In the chart below that they presented at the event, you can see that the Top 10 podcasts account for about 35% of UK weekly podcast listeners. And you have to go as far as the Top 27 podcasts to get to 50% (these are based on Q4 2025 data).
That in itself is interesting, and you can see that the top handful of podcasts have a commanding lead over many podcasts that perhaps reach 1-2% of the podcast listening audience.
But big shows are getting bigger. In Q4 2023, you would have needed the Top 43 shows to get to 50% of the overall audience, whereas in Q4 2025 it was just the Top 27.
But then the audience size has increased from around 16m podcast listeners in the UK in 2023 to around 19m in 2025.
All data is from Edison Podcast Metrics: Edison Podcast Metrics is unique in that it is not dependent on podcast download data and does not require podcast networks to opt into its service. At least 2,000 weekly podcast consumers in the UK are surveyed each quarter, and listening behaviour is collected regardless of listening platform. The same methodology is being employed in the UK as is used in the U.S.