Fewer New Podcasts Launching In 2026 As Active Show Count Jumps.

The year is off to a slow start for new podcast launches. Listen Notes says 12,852 shows debuted last month worldwide. While that may sound like plenty to keep the average podcast listener busy, it’s 30% fewer new show launches than a year earlier. Typically, the first few months of the year see a flood of new shows after a slower release schedule during the fourth quarter. But that doesn’t seem to be materializing in 2026. Listen Notes says 31,715 new shows have launched so far this year. That is down from 32,385 a year ago.

There is no shortage of content, however. Since the start of the year, 4,231,807 episodes have been released. Listen Notes says there are already more active shows in 2026 than during all of last year. It reports 391,394 podcasts are considered active this year, up from 314,452 last year. That translates to 11% of all podcasts that have ever launched being currently active, a figure that many consider to be a better measure of the competitive landscape than the total 3.7 million shows that Listen Notes says have ever launched.

Listen Notes also reports 2,653 podcasts have died in 2026. It considers a show to have died when the RSS feed is deleted, or its iTunes “Completed” tag is marked “yes” by the publisher.

The new year has begun with the largest number shows produced by artificial intelligence that were removed from the Listen Notes database since it began scrubbing that content. The company says it removed a record 7,511 AI-generated “fake” podcasts created by AI were removed from its search engine during February. That’s on top of 5,942 in January, when a previous record was set.