Which apps support video podcasts?

• Video podcasts have always been available via RSS, and right now there are at least 113,000 podcasts using video in this way. But how many podcast players actually play video podcasts? A new study from Podnews today shows that only 9% of downloads for a typical video podcast would actually show you the video on-screen when you hit play: and some large podcast apps just simply don’t support video at all.

  • Particularly, in our tests, we discovered that by default, video playback in Apple Podcasts is less than a tenth of an inch high on a large iPhone.

• Talks .co, a platform that connects podcasters and guests, has launched a new advanced search feature which makes it easier to uncover shows - including whether that show was recently updated or how long they’ve been podcasting.

• John Wordock publishes “26 questions about podcasting in 2026”. He’ll be at Podfest talking about how to build a YouTube channel. (Psst: if you’re a Podnews newsletter subscriber, get money off Podfest tickets)

• The LA Times claims we’re in the Eras tour of podcasting. Writing in Forbes, Frank Racioppi wonders if true crime podcasts are losing popularity.

What’s next: 2026 in podcasting

Ellie Rubenstein, Pocket Casts:

We’ll see a lot more AI-generated content across the industry. Not all of it will be exciting, but one area I’m personally looking forward to is voice translations. With the advancements we’re seeing today, the ability for creators to speak once and reach much bigger audiences in different languages is going to open doors that just weren’t possible before.

Community is going to be a much bigger theme. I hear it everywhere from creators. More live events, more small group interactions, more ways for listeners to feel connected directly to the people that they follow. That feels like an important shift.

Looking at the platforms overall, I expect Apple to lean harder into discovery. They have a real opportunity to modernize how listeners find shows and surface clips in a way that still respects the open ecosystem. If they ship meaningful updates there, it could raise the floor for everyone.

And since we can’t talk about predictions without mentioning video, I think we’ll finally see it settle into a clearer role in 2026. Video will keep driving discovery, but audio will stay the core format for most creators and most listeners.

And finally, this one is more of a wishful thinking than a prediction, but I’d love to see more creators adopting podcasting 2.0 tags in 2026. Tags like pod roll, location, people, transcripts, and everything that could deepen the relationship between creators and their audiences.

• Hear more in the Podnews Weekly Review

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