Apple Podcasts: top shows around the world for 2022
Earlier this month, Apple published a number of charts looking at popular shows on the platform. These charts were published within the Apple Podcasts app, and only your own country’s data was visible: but we have the data from many different countries to share.
We have also added the main genre that each podcast used, and spotted the hosting company for each one. If the podcast is using a Channel within Apple Podcasts, we link to that, too.
Top shows by country
See the full lists by selecting a country:
USA · 
UK · 
Ireland · 
United Arab Emirates · 
Australia · 
New Zealand · 
Germany · 
Austria · 
Brazil · 
Canada · 
Italy · 
Mexico · 
Sweden · 
Norway · 
Denmark · 
Spain · 
India · 
France · 
Türkiye · 
Switzerland
Overall statistics
There were a total of 370 highlighted shows. This data is purely algorithmic, calculated by a combination of new follows, playback activity and completion rate. It allows us to take a quick snapshot of the top podcast shows in the world.
Top ten genres
- 1: News (60)
- 2: True Crime (58)
- 3: Comedy (51)
- 4: Culture (37)
- 5: Society & Culture (32)
- 6: Health & Fitness (19)
- 7: History (14)
- 8: Business (13)
- 9: Education (11)
- 10: Politics (9)
Top ten podcast hosts
- 1: Acast (53)
- 2: Simplecast (46)
- 3: Omny Studio (42)
- 4: Megaphone (33)
- 5: Spreaker (13)
= Spotify for Podcasters (13) - 7: Triton Digital (12)
- 8: ART19 (11)
- 9: BBC (10)
= www.srf.ch (10)
Podcasts nominated in three countries or more
- 5 countries: The Daily (The New York Times)
- 5 countries: Serial (Serial Productions & The New York Times)
- 5 countries: Casefile True Crime (Casefile Presents)
- 4 countries: This American Life (This American Life)
- 4 countries: Stuff You Should Know (iHeartPodcasts)
- 4 countries: On Purpose with Jay Shetty (iHeartPodcasts)
- 4 countries: Global News Podcast (BBC World Service)
- 3 countries: LANZ & PRECHT (ZDF, Markus Lanz & Richard David Precht)
- 3 countries: Verbrechen (ZEIT ONLINE)
Podcast language
- English (132 podcasts)
- German (58 podcasts)
- Spanish (39 podcasts)
- Portuguese (20 podcasts)
- Swedish (19 podcasts)
- Norwegian (19 podcasts)
- Danish (19 podcasts)
- Italian (18 podcasts)
- French (15 podcasts)
- Arabic (10 podcasts)
- Turkish (10 podcasts)
- (None given) (9 podcasts)
- Catalan (1 podcasts)
- Hindi (1 podcasts)
By Apple Podcasts Channel
- iHeartPodcasts (8 entries)
- BBC Podcasts (7 entries)
- ZEIT ONLINE (7 entries)
- NRK Radio (7 entries)
- SER Podcast (7 entries)
- Crime X (6 entries)
- SRF Podcast (6 entries)
- The New York Times (5 entries)
- Wondery (5 entries)
- Serial (5 entries)
- Casefile Presents (5 entries)
- Sveriges Radio (5 entries)
- mics | مايكس (4 entries)
- ثمَانِيَة /thmanyah (4 entries)
We also carry Apple Podcasts top shows from 2023.
Hero image: Daniel Fontenele via Unsplash
Sources: Charts from Apple Podcasts. Our genre data uses a normalised list via Podcast Index, based on the RSS feed. Podcast hosting company data based on the RSS feed and media enclosure, using OPAWG, and counts total nominations. Language information is as stated in the RSS feed. Where podcasts have opted-out of external directories, we can’t extract any information.
Affiliate links: This page links to Apple Podcasts. We may receive a commission for purchases made via those links.