Top Podcasts in the United States for the Week of October 5, 2026

The latest verified U.S. Top 20 available during the week of October 5 was published by Podtrac on October 7, 2026. It ranks September audiences, however, rather than measuring listening during the week of October 5. That distinction matters: this is the freshest official chart located for this edition, but it is not a weekly leaderboard. The leading nine shows held their positions from August, while several titles below them moved up or down.

Podtrac’s September list is based on unique U.S. monthly audience among participating shows. For listeners, it is a useful way to see which measured programs reached the most individual people during a full month. It is less useful if you want a snapshot of what is trending today, or a universal ranking across every podcast app.

Latest verified U.S. podcast Top 20

Podtrac published this chart on October 7 and labels the measurement period “US Audience: September 2026.” The “Change” column below reproduces the chart’s rank movement from the prior month. A dash means no change is shown in the current chart.

Source: Podtrac’s September 2026 Top U.S. Podcasts chart.

What changed since the previous chart?

The biggest takeaway is stability at the top. The first nine entries—Crime Junkie through The Ben Shapiro Show—are all marked unchanged from August. That means the leading tier did not reshuffle in this release. It does not prove their audiences were identical; rank can stay flat even if audience totals rise or fall, provided competitors do not pass one another.

Movement is more visible from No. 10 onward. This American Life rose one place to No. 10, swapping positions with Stuff You Should Know, now No. 11. 48 Hours, The Shawn Ryan Show, and The Dan Bongino Show each gained one place. My Favorite Murder made the largest climb among these titles, rising three spots to No. 15. 20/20 also gained three positions, reaching No. 17.

The sharpest decline was The Ezra Klein Show, down four places to No. 16. Today, Explained slipped one spot to No. 18, and The Tim Dillon Show fell one to No. 20. Morning Wire was listed at No. 19 with a six-place gain. These are rank changes, not percentages or audience-size changes. Podtrac’s public Top 20 does not provide the individual monthly audience totals alongside this list, so the chart cannot tell readers how large the gap was between neighboring shows.

Rotten Mango, which appeared at No. 16 in August, is absent from September’s displayed Top 20. That means it did not appear in this month’s published Top 20; it does not establish that the show stopped publishing or that its audience disappeared. A ranked list has a cutoff, and positions below that cutoff are not shown here.

How Podtrac measures the ranking

Podtrac says its monthly podcast ranking uses U.S. Unique Monthly Audience, or UMA: the number of individual audience members who listened to a show during the month. A person who listens to several episodes of one podcast in September is counted once for that show’s UMA. The September chart includes shows that participate in Podtrac measurement for the full month being ranked. The company describes the Top 20 as a ranking of top podcasts that measure with Podtrac.

This creates a practical tradeoff. UMA is a people-based monthly measure, which makes it useful for comparing participating shows by reach over the same period. It does not measure how many episodes a listener played, how long each person listened, or whether an episode was downloaded and completed. Nor does the chart cover every show on every platform. Read it as a measured monthly audience ranking, not as a census of all U.S. podcast listening.

Spotify maintains a separate U.S. podcast chart and describes its charts as a daily guide to popular podcasts on Spotify. That can be a better fit when your goal is to find programs popular on that service right now. The chart answers a different question from Podtrac’s monthly UMA ranking, so do not combine their positions as though both used one common metric.

Which chart should you use?

If you want a stable comparison of large measured audiences, start with Podtrac’s September list. If you want something to play today, use the chart inside the app where you listen and treat it as that platform’s recommendation signal. For a specific interest, use the show description and recent episodes before subscribing; a high overall rank does not tell you whether its subject, tone, episode length, or release schedule fits your routine.

What this October 5 edition can—and cannot—say

No official, cross-platform U.S. weekly ranking specifically measured for the week of October 5 was verified for this article. Podtrac’s blog says its industry rankings are monthly and separately offers weekly podcast trend reports, but the September Top 20 is the actual chart available here. The publication date is October 7, 2026; the audience period is September 2026. Keeping those dates separate avoids presenting month-old measurement as a fresh weekly count.

For future comparisons, compare like with like: the same chart, the same metric, and consecutive measurement periods. A change in an app’s daily position and a change in monthly unique audience answer different questions. For this release, the defensible reading is straightforward: the top nine stayed in place, the lower half saw modest reshuffling, and Morning Wire recorded the largest upward move shown. The rankings describe measured reach, while the best podcast for an individual listener still depends on what they want to hear.

Sources and methodology

• Podtrac’s October 7, 2026 ranking release, which identifies September 2026 as the chart period.
• Podtrac’s explanation of its podcast audience rankings, including its definition of monthly UMA and participation scope.
• Spotify’s U.S. Podcast Charts, which Spotify describes as a daily guide to popular podcasts on its service.
• Podtrac’s August 2026 chart, used only to compare the prior month.