Podcasting's Risk-Taking Era Is Here.

Download a new trend report featuring eleven creators who bet on experimentation and won.

Our friends at The Signal Awards, which recognizes the podcasts that define culture, have released their 2026 trend report, "Recognizing The Risk Takers." It's a look at the podcasters, producers, and industry builders who are leaning into uncertainty right now and coming out the other side with something worth listening to.

A few standout stories from the report:

• An indie show launched with no network and no celebrity host landed on Spotify Wrapped's Top 10 Best New Shows of 2025 -- with 3M+ downloads
• One podcaster went from 9K to 600K followers in 9 months by creating a social media alter ego
• A journalism podcast at The Guardian took the risk of going video -- without sacrificing its standards
• A production company held a company-wide AI sprint and built an agentic research partner for their flagship show

65% of podcast teams surveyed added AI tools to their workflow in the last year. 67% are now publishing a video version of their podcast. The report explores what these shifts really mean -- and what creators are actually doing about them.

Download the free report from The Signal Awards to spark your next big risk.

Another Opportunity for Your Podcasts

There’s still time to enter your podcasts in The 5th Annual Signal Awards. To honor the full breadth of the podcast medium, they accept genre and craft entries from Shows, Limited Series & Specials, Individual Episodes, and Brand Storytelling across a range of categories. Enter before their Final Entry Deadline on Friday, June 26th.