Canadian podcast listening didn't just grow in 2025 — it surged. According to Triton Digital's fourth annual Canadian Podcast Report, monthly reach climbed to 46%, up from 39% the year before. That's the largest year-over-year increase ever recorded for the format in Canada, and it comes alongside deeper engagement across the board: weekly listeners are now consuming an average of 4.1 podcasts and 8.9 episodes per week, both up from 2023 levels.
For anyone building, growing, or advertising on a podcast aimed at Canadian listeners, this report is worth a close read. Here's what stood out.
1. Video Is No Longer Optional
The single biggest shift in the report is the move toward video-inclusive listening. Three-quarters of monthly podcast consumers (75%) now include video in their routine — 51% both watch and listen, while 24% watch exclusively. Only a quarter of listeners remain audio-only purists.
That shift has reshaped the platform landscape. YouTube is now the single most-used podcast platform in Canada, with 40% of monthly consumers naming it their primary app — up from 35% in 2024 and just 29% in 2023. It has overtaken both Spotify (26%) and Apple Podcasts (12%) as the go-to destination. Apple Podcasts still leads on raw new-episode downloads (49% share) via RSS, but “most used” and “most downloaded” are increasingly different metrics — and the most-used one is trending toward video.
Takeaway for creators: if you're not recording video alongside your audio feed, you're increasingly invisible to the fastest-growing segment of the audience.
2. Canadian-Made Content Is Pulling Ahead of U.S. Shows
Canadian content now holds a 43% average listening share versus 41% for U.S. podcasts — its strongest lead over American content in seven years. This is a meaningful shift from 2019, when U.S. shows commanded 52% share versus Canada's 38%.
3. French-Speaking Canada Is a Growth Story Worth Watching
After a dip in 2024, Francophone podcast consumption rebounded to 49% monthly reach among English-French-Total measures, with French speakers notably more likely to be new monthly users — 44% started listening regularly within the past year, versus 37% of English speakers. This audience is also distinct in its habits: French-Canadian listeners consume 70% Canadian-made content, operating almost as a self-contained ecosystem.
For creators and advertisers, this is a growth pocket that's easy to overlook and increasingly hard to ignore.
4. News, True Crime, and Comedy Still Dominate — But Differently
By share of downloads, the top three genres remain unchanged: News (29%), True Crime (15%), and Comedy (12%). But the report's episode-release data reveals two very different strategies at play. News relies on volume — 39% of all new episodes released monthly come from the News genre. True Crime, by contrast, releases far fewer episodes (just 2% of monthly new-episode volume) but still drives strong download numbers — meaning each True Crime episode works significantly harder than the average News episode.
5. Genre Shapes Audience More Than You'd Expect
The report's audience-composition data is a useful targeting tool for both creators and advertisers:
- True Crime and Health & Fitness skew strongly female (65% and 68% respectively)
- Sports is the most male-dominated genre (78%)
- Comedy attracts the youngest audience of any major genre (48% aged 18-34)
- Business listeners are the most affluent (38% earning $100k+)
- News attracts the oldest audience, with 35% aged 55+
6. Platform Choice Signals Audience Type
Beyond content genre, the platform itself tells you something about who's listening:
- Spotify has the youngest audience by a wide margin (median age 36.9 vs. 42+ on YouTube and Apple)
- Apple Podcasts listeners are the most affluent and most educated
- YouTube skews male, with an average age close to Apple's
What This Means Going Into 2026
The report's authors frame it well: Canada's podcast landscape “continues to evolve at pace, marked by record audience growth, the rise of video-driven consumption, and a stronger emphasis on Canadian and Francophone content.” For creators, the strategic implications are fairly clear — video is now table stakes, Canadian-made content has real momentum, and genre-level audience data is specific enough to inform both content decisions and sponsorship pitches.
Source: Triton Digital, Canadian Podcast Report 2026, in partnership with Signal Hill Insights and Ulster Media. Data reflects Triton's IAB Tech Lab-certified Podcast Metrics service (April 2025–March 2026) and The Canadian Podcast Listener 2025 survey.
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