DailyWire's US podcast audience grew 20% in October 2026, the largest monthly increase among the publishers Podtrac singled out in the rankings it released today. PRX followed with 19%, and The Volume and ReVolver Podcasts each added 14%. The month ended three days before the US midterm elections of November 3, and news publishers were well represented among the gainers: CNN rose 10%, while Fox Audio Network, Versant, NPR Sales Network and Blaze Media each grew their audience by 9%. In its announcement, Podtrac wrote that "Month-over-month growth was positive for most publishers and networks on both the US and Global Multi-Channel Rankings."

In Short

Podtrac's October 2026 podcast rankings, published today, show most large US podcast publishers adding audience compared with September, led by DailyWire at 20% and PRX at 19%. The gains matter for advertisers buying podcast reach, because news and political publishers grew in the run-up to the midterms and because the number of people reached rose faster than the number of downloads at several of the biggest networks. At iHeart Audience Network, the largest seller in the table, the audience grew 12% while downloads grew 3%, so more people were reached but each one downloaded fewer episodes on average.

The October table

Podtrac ranks US publishers and sales networks by US unique monthly audience: the number of distinct people in the United States who downloaded or played at least one of their podcasts during the month. Its October 2026 table, labelled "US Audience: October 2026" on the Podtrac publisher ranking page, lists 18 entries. The top three did not move.

iHeart Audience Network, a sales network that sells advertising across shows it does not necessarily own, recorded 64,296,000 unique monthly listeners and 294,663,000 US downloads and streams, across 30,061 active shows. iHeartPodcasts, the company's own production arm, came second with 35,278,000 listeners and 172,955,000 downloads and streams. NPR Sales Network held third with 19,662,000 listeners and 101,745,000 downloads and streams.

Below them, the order changed. Vox Media climbed from sixth in September to fourth, with 7,581,000 listeners, overtaking both The Walt Disney Company (7,386,000, fifth for a second month) and Barstool Sports (6,950,000, up one place to sixth). DailyWire, which appears in Podtrac's table as DailyWire+, jumped from tenth to seventh with 6,182,000. Fox Audio Network (6,007,000) and PodcastOne (5,995,000) took eighth and ninth, separated by just 12,000 listeners.

The rest of the table, in order, reads: Paramount 4,245,000; Versant 3,653,000; WNYC Studios 3,030,000; PRX 2,887,000; The Volume 2,646,000; This American Life 2,213,000; Blaze Media 2,084,000; ReVolver Podcasts 1,534,000; and CNN 1,442,000.

The month-over-month changes

Podtrac's announcement lists 14 publishers with monthly increases on the US ranking, each with a percentage rise in audience and in downloads and plays:

  • DailyWire: audience up 20%, downloads and plays up 11%
  • PRX: 19% and 16%
  • The Volume: 14% and 12%
  • ReVolver Podcasts: 14% and 5%
  • Vox Media: 13% and 15%
  • iHeart Audience Network: 12% and 3%
  • CNN: 10% and 9%
  • iHeartPodcasts: 10% and 6%
  • Fox Audio Network: 9% and 18%
  • Versant: 9% and 13%
  • NPR Sales Network: 9% and 9%
  • Blaze Media: 9% and 8%
  • WNYC Studios: 9% and 7%
  • The Walt Disney Company: 7% and 6%

That list is not exhaustive. Barstool Sports does not appear on it, yet its audience rose about 4.8% from September's 6,633,000, by PPC Land's calculation from the two published tables. Its downloads and streams went the other way, falling roughly 9.5%, from 19,533,000 to 17,672,000. Podtrac gives no October change for PodcastOne, Paramount or This American Life.

The contrast with a month earlier is sharp. When Podtrac released its September data on October 7, it counted 8 of the US ranking participants up on downloads and 11 up on audience. Several of the biggest names lost listeners that month: iHeart Audience Network's audience fell 2.2%, NPR Sales Network's 0.6% and Vox Media's 1.9%. In October, at least 14 publishers grew on both measures.

The published tables also allow a check on Podtrac's rounding. Most of its percentages match the raw figures. One does not quite: iHeartPodcasts' downloads and streams rose from 162,301,000 to 172,955,000, which is 6.6% by PPC Land's calculation, against the 6% in Podtrac's announcement.

Audience grew faster than listening

The most useful pattern for media buyers sits in the gap between the two columns. At iHeart Audience Network, the audience rose by 6,734,000 people, or 11.7%, while downloads and streams rose by 9,036,000, or 3.2%. More people listened; the average person listened to less.

Dividing downloads and streams by unique audience gives a rough measure of how many episodes each listener consumed in the month. For iHeart Audience Network, that ratio dropped from about 4.96 in September to 4.58 in October, by PPC Land's calculation. iHeartPodcasts slipped from 5.08 to 4.90. NPR Sales Network barely moved, from 5.20 to 5.17, and kept the highest ratio in the table.

Smaller publishers showed the same shape. DailyWire's audience grew 20% against an 11% rise in downloads, taking its ratio from about 3.99 to 3.66. ReVolver Podcasts gained 14% in audience but only 5% in downloads, and its ratio fell from 2.39 to 2.20. Barstool's fell from 2.94 to 2.54.

A few publishers moved the opposite way. Fox Audio Network's downloads grew twice as fast as its audience, 18% against 9%, which lifts its ratio to 3.80. Versant (13% against 9%) and Vox Media (15% against 13%) also saw listening per head increase. This American Life, a single show, rose from 1.83 to 2.07.

For an advertiser, the distinction is between reach and frequency. A network adding audience faster than downloads is reaching more distinct people, each of whom hears fewer episodes, and therefore fewer ad slots, over the month. A network where downloads outpace audience is serving a stable or growing base more often. Podtrac's tables do not say whether the new listeners came from new shows, new platforms, one-off news events or returning lapsed listeners.

One extra day

Calendar length explains part of the downloads growth. October has 31 days and September 30, so a publisher whose daily listening was flat would still post about 3.3% more monthly downloads. On a per-day basis, iHeart Audience Network's downloads and streams were essentially unchanged, at about 9.51 million a day in October against 9.52 million in September. iHeartPodcasts rose about 3.1% a day, NPR Sales Network about 5.0% and DailyWire about 7.2%. Barstool's per-day figure fell about 12.4%.

Unique audience behaves differently. A longer month gives more chances for a person to appear at least once, but the effect is not proportional, and Podtrac does not publish daily audience figures.

Libsyn leaves the table

The October table has one entry fewer than September's. Libsyn, a sales network that ranked fourth in September with 12,681,000 listeners, does not appear in the October US ranking. Podtrac includes only publishers that participate in its measurement for the full month being ranked, according to its ranking page, and its announcement does not mention Libsyn. The reason for the absence is not stated.

In September, Libsyn sat roughly 5.8 million listeners ahead of fifth-placed Disney, so its absence lifted every publisher below it by one place before any change in audience. Barstool's rise from seventh to sixth comes entirely from that shift. Vox Media's climb from sixth to fourth includes one genuine overtaking, of Disney, and DailyWire passed two publishers on its way from tenth to seventh.

iHeart Audience Network's count of active shows also reversed. In September it jumped by 6,143 to 32,741, a rise Podtrac did not explain. In October it fell back by 2,680 to 30,061. iHeartPodcasts went from 931 to 982 shows, and NPR Sales Network stayed at 73.

The global picture

Podtrac's second table, the Global Multi-Channel Publisher & Network Ranking, counts worldwide audio downloads and streams together with video views and streams of full podcast episodes. For YouTube, it counts engaged views as reported by YouTube; for Spotify, video streams as reported by Spotify. Clips on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube are shown separately and do not affect the rank.

For October, Podtrac's announcement gives percentage changes in "downloads, views and plays" for eight entries: Fox Audio Network and PRX up 18%, The Volume up 13%, DailyWire up 11%, CNN up 9%, NPR Sales Network and WNYC Studios up 8%, and iHeart Audience Network up 3%. It does not give absolute October totals, and on November 9 Podtrac's public global ranking page still carried September 2026 figures.

Applying the October percentages to those September totals gives approximate figures, which are PPC Land's estimates rather than Podtrac's numbers and inherit the rounding of the percentages. iHeart Audience Network would reach roughly 545 million, from 529,089,000. NPR Sales Network would rise to about 116.7 million from 108,056,000, and DailyWire to about 45.9 million from 41,320,000. Fox Audio Network would move to around 31.0 million from 26,275,000, slightly above Barstool's September total of 30,256,000. Without Barstool's October figure, whether Fox overtook it cannot be determined.

The September global table showed how much the video share differs by publisher. Meidas Media Network ranked second worldwide with 142,336,000, of which 131,661,000 came from video. The Volume drew 14,326,000 of its 24,325,000 from video, and DailyWire 22,060,000 of 41,320,000. PRX, by contrast, recorded 1,000 video views against 8,465,000 audio downloads and streams, so its 18% October gain is almost entirely audio. Podtrac's announcement does not include Meidas, Sonoro Global Media, Paramount, Libsyn or Barstool among the October global gainers, and gives no figure for them.

The shows

Podtrac's show ranking, also built on US unique monthly audience, kept its top five intact for October 2026, according to the Podtrac podcast ranking page: Crime Junkie from AudioChuck first, The Daily from The New York Times second, NPR News Now third, Up First from NPR fourth and Dateline NBC from NBCUniversal fifth. Podtrac does not publish audience figures for individual shows, so the size of the gaps is not visible.

The movement came lower down. Pod Save America, from Crooked Media, climbed two places to sixth. Fox News Hourly Update slipped one to seventh and Pardon My Take, from Barstool Sports, one to eighth. The Ben Shapiro Show held ninth. Stuff You Should Know rose one to tenth, while This American Life dropped one to 11th.

The Ezra Klein Show posted the biggest climb in the top 20, up four places to 12th. 48 Hours, from Paramount, had the biggest drop, down three to 15th. The Shawn Ryan Show (13th) and The Dan Bongino Show (14th) were unchanged. Today, Explained rose one to 17th and The Tim Dillon Show two to 18th, while 20/20 fell two to 19th and Morning Wire, DailyWire's news show, one to 20th.

The order at the top has changed since last year. In Podtrac's July 2025 ranking, NPR News Now took first place, pushing The Daily to second. In October 2026 it was third, behind both The Daily and Crime Junkie.

An election month

October 2026 was the last full month before the midterm elections, and the advertising market around it was unusually large. AdImpact projected total midterm political advertising at $11.6 billion, more than the $11.2 billion spent in the 2024 presidential cycle, with DAX US reporting political podcast ad spend up 42% year over year. Meta stopped accepting new US political and social issue ads from October 27 through election day on November 3.

Fox Corporation, owner of Fox Audio Network, reported advertising revenue up 47% to $2.08 billion in the quarter to September 30, helped by the World Cup and early midterm spending; Lachlan Murdoch put political revenue for the whole cycle at more than $350 million. Versant, which owns MS NOW, has been a separate company since Comcast completed its separation on January 2, 2026, and its podcast audience rose 9% in October.

Podtrac does not attribute any of the October changes to the election. Gains were not limited to news outlets: The Volume, a sports network, and PRX, a public media distributor, were among the largest. Nor did every political show rise. Fox News Hourly Update and Morning Wire both lost a place in the show ranking, while Pod Save America and The Ezra Klein Show gained. November's data will show whether the news publishers keep the audience once the vote has passed.

How Podtrac counts

The US ranking and the global ranking measure different things, and neither is a census of the market. According to Podtrac's ranking pages, the US download figure is the total of unique RSS downloads and Spotify plays, audio and video, originating in the United States. That definition does not include YouTube. The global table adds YouTube, where Podtrac counts engaged views rather than the public view counter.

That choice dates from September 3, 2026, when Podtrac said YouTube's new public view count overstated podcast attention: in a sample of 84.2 million views, engaged views made up 64% of counted views on podcast playlist videos and 58% on other podcast channel videos. YouTube had changed its counter so that views count from the first frame of playback from August 24. October is the second full month measured under that approach.

Participation is voluntary, and publishers that do not take part for the full month do not appear. The publisher table is therefore not a map of the whole market: The New York Times, whose The Daily ranks second among shows, is not in it, and nor are Crooked Media or AudioChuck, despite each having a show in the top six. A show can also sit under different companies in different rankings. Podtrac lists The Dan Bongino Show under the publisher Silverloch, while Triton Digital's September ranker listed it under Cumulus Podcast Network.

Triton's own figures run on a different basis. Its September 2026 ranker put iHeart first with 67.3 million average weekly downloads, measured under version 2.2 of the IAB Tech Lab podcast guidelines; IAB Tech Lab finalised version 2.3, covering video episodes, on September 29, 2026.

Why the numbers matter for buyers

For planners, a free monthly table is one of the few public benchmarks in podcast advertising, where much inventory is still sold on publisher-reported data. The amounts are growing. A VAB report put US podcast ad spend at $3.40 billion in 2026, rising to $4.69 billion by 2030, citing eMarketer forecasts.

Company results point the same way, if more slowly than a year ago. SiriusXM said its podcast advertising grew 20% in the third quarter, down from 30% in the second quarter. Acast's North American sales rose 54% to SEK 384.0 million in the same period, overtaking Europe. iHeartMedia reported second-quarter 2026 podcast revenue of $162.1 million, up 20.7%.

Where listening happens is also shifting. Sounds Profitable found that 21% of US podcast consumers used Netflix for podcasts in the past year, behind YouTube at 63% and Spotify at 33%. Netflix viewing is not counted in either Podtrac table, and YouTube appears only in the global one. That limits how far the US ranking can describe a publisher's total audience, particularly for video-led networks.

What October's data does show is a market that added people faster than it added listening. For the biggest network in the table, the extra 6.7 million listeners came with almost no change in daily downloads. Whether that reflects new audiences drawn in by a news-heavy month, or a broader base listening less often, is something only the coming months' tables can settle.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Podtrac, the podcast measurement company, and the publishers in its rankings, led by iHeart Audience Network, iHeartPodcasts and NPR Sales Network, with the largest monthly gains at DailyWire, PRX, The Volume and ReVolver Podcasts.

What: Podtrac's October 2026 rankings show DailyWire's US unique monthly audience up 20% and PRX's up 19%, with 14 publishers named as growing on both audience and downloads, against 8 up on downloads and 11 on audience in September. iHeart Audience Network added 6,734,000 listeners to reach 64,296,000, while its downloads rose only about 3%. Vox Media moved to fourth, DailyWire to seventh, and Libsyn, fourth in September, is absent from the October US table.

When: Podtrac released the rankings today, November 9, 2026. They cover October 2026, the last full month before the November 3 midterm elections, and compare with September data released on October 7.

Where: The US ranking measures listening in the United States through RSS downloads and Spotify plays. The Global Multi-Channel ranking adds worldwide audio and video, including YouTube engaged views and Spotify video streams.

Why: Podtrac's tables are one of the few free, independent monthly benchmarks for podcast advertising. October's figures show reach growing faster than listening at the largest networks, a distinction that changes how many ad impressions each new listener represents, in a month shaped by election-year news and record political ad spending.