Voting for the British Podcast Awards Listeners’ Choice, the one category that listeners decide, is open from today, 30 July, until 28 August, and the only place you can vote is the Spotify mobile app.
The Top 20 shortlist was revealed this morning. It was drawn from a public nomination round that ran for two weeks on the British Podcast Awards website and closed on Thursday 23 July. The winner is announced at the ceremony on Thursday 1 October at indigo at The O2 in London.
Three votes, Spotify app only
Round 1 was open on the British Podcast Awards website. Anyone could nominate a favourite show, one vote per email address, and any podcast available on Spotify was eligible. The twenty shows with the most nominations went through.
Round 2 takes place only in the Spotify mobile app, and every voter gets three votes to spread across the Top 20 however they like. You can back three different shows, or put more behind fewer. The organisers say the aim is to make voting easier and to help listeners discover shows they have not heard.
You do not need a paid Spotify subscription to take part, but you do need the app. Voting closes on 28 August 2026.
Louis Theroux, Newscast and the 2026 field
The wider 2026 shortlist, announced on 23 July, is a strong field. Trade reporting put the overall nominations at 180 podcasts across 29 categories. Among the names in contention are The Louis Theroux Podcast, The Guilty Feminist, Newscast, Today in Focus, Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware, Football Weekly, Stick to Cricket, The Intelligence and Sliced Bread: BBC and broadsheet output alongside independent shows and long-running comedy. If the news end of that field is your thing, our roundup of the best current affairs podcasts covers most of it.
Two Editor’s Choice categories sit outside the main list. The Spotlight Award recognises shows averaging more than 100,000 downloads per episode. The Specialist Award celebrates independent podcasts with fewer than 5,000 listens per episode and highlights underrepresented voices.
Recent Listeners’ Choice winners include Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society, Help I Sexted My Boss and RedHanded, which has taken the award three times. The vote has historically favoured shows with committed, mobilised fanbases over the biggest download numbers.
YouTube leads, Spotify holds the vote
Research published on 16 July by Edison Research at SSRS, in The UK Podcast Consumer 2026, found that YouTube has overtaken Spotify as the most-used podcast service among British weekly listeners aged 15 and over, on 29% against Spotify’s 28%. BBC Sounds sits at 15%.
So roughly seven in ten weekly UK podcast listeners name something other than Spotify as their main service, and the national award’s only public vote now runs inside Spotify. Some of them will have the app anyway. Others will not, and will not vote.
We think this is a reasonable trade for the awards in the short term. Spotify brings reach, a simple in-app voting flow and real discovery for shortlisted shows, which is more than a form on a website delivers.
The longer-term question is what a Listeners’ Choice result represents when one platform is the gate. If UK listeners keep moving to YouTube, a Spotify-only vote will gradually measure Spotify’s audience more than Britain’s. The organisers have not said whether the arrangement continues beyond 2026.
The same Edison research found 72% of UK weekly podcast consumers now watch video podcasts, up from 58% in 2023, while 87% still listen to audio-only shows. This year’s awards include a Video Innovation category.
How to vote before 28 August
Open the Spotify mobile app and find the Listeners’ Choice hub. You have three votes and four weeks. If nothing on the Top 20 grabs you, the shortlist across the other categories is a decent listening list in its own right, and so is our own pick of the best podcasts on Spotify.
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