How to grow a podcast on YouTube in 2026

A lot of podcast listening now happens on YouTube. YouTube says more than 1 billion people a month watched podcasts there as of January 2025, and that viewers watched over 700 million hours of podcasts on TVs in October 2025, up from 400 million a year before. Edison Research's Q3 2026 Podcast Metrics again ranked YouTube first among US weekly podcast consumers as the platform they use most, ahead of Spotify at 17% and Apple Podcasts at 9%, as Barrett Media reported. YouTube's own page for podcasters cites Edison's 2023 Gen Z report: 84% of US Gen Z monthly podcast listeners surveyed had discovered a podcast on YouTube.

The difference from a podcast app is how people find you. YouTube's search and recommendations show episodes to people who've never heard of you, and Shorts put a minute of an episode in front of people scrolling. So growing there takes three things: episodes set up as a podcast, packaging that earns the click, and Shorts that bring new people to the full episode.

This guide is about YouTube only. The setup for filming a show and publishing it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts is in how to start a video podcast, and promotion beyond YouTube (guesting, email, paid ads) in how to promote a podcast.

YouTube's help pages describe three ways in. Each episode ends up as a video either way: YouTube says MP3 files can't be made into a podcast.

Video episodes are the strongest choice if you film. Accounts need to be verified to upload anything longer than 15 minutes, and the most one upload can be is 256 GB or 12 hours, whichever is less.

Audio over a picture works for any audio show. The free audiogram maker puts an episode's audio over your cover art with a moving waveform and captions, in your browser.

An RSS feed does the uploading for you. YouTube emails a code to the address in your feed to confirm it's yours, then makes a video of your show art for each episode you choose. New episodes upload on their own, private by default so you can check them first. The catches, from YouTube's page: an episode's audio can't be changed once it's published (you re-upload it from the feed), deleting a video on YouTube doesn't remove the episode from your feed, and podcast content uploaded this way can't contain advertisements, with paid promotions declared. If your audio carries ads, read that page first. RSS delivery is only in the countries and regions on YouTube's list, which includes the US, Canada, the UK, India, Australia and every EU country.

On YouTube, a podcast is a playlist marked as one, and each episode is a video in it. To make one, in YouTube Studio choose Create, then New podcast, and add a title, a description, a visibility and a square thumbnail (YouTube recommends 1280 × 1280). Already have a playlist of episodes? In Studio, go to Content, then Playlists, open its Options and choose Add podcast features. YouTube's rules for it:

• Full episodes only, one public podcast per show, every season in the same one, and no clips, other shows or other channels' uploads mixed in.
• The show's own name as the title, without adding “podcast” unless it's part of the name. A generic title like “Full Episodes” can make YouTube Music show your channel name instead.
• The right order. Under Default Video Order, episodic shows sort newest first and serial shows oldest first.
• Content you own. YouTube says some playlists aren't eligible even when marked as podcasts, including content the creator doesn't own.

A podcast that qualifies may get, in YouTube's words:

The Podcasts tab. In YouTube Studio, your podcasts are under Content, on the Podcasts tab, where you add episodes and edit details. On your channel page, Google rolled out a Podcasts tab in 2023 that shows the playlists you've marked as podcasts, between Live and Playlists, as 9to5Google reported. YouTube's current help pages don't describe that tab, so check your own channel to see it.

Keep other playlists as ordinary ones: a “start here” set of your best episodes, one per recurring topic, and one of your Shorts (they don't belong in the podcast, and YouTube says Shorts won't appear in YouTube Music).

Most people who could find an episode on YouTube have never heard of the show, so the title has to work for a stranger. YouTube's tip is to title each episode video with the episode's name and, if you like, the show's. Titles can be up to 100 characters, and descriptions up to 5,000.

• Lead with the topic or the guest people would search for, and keep episode numbers out of the front.
• Write the description for search: two or three lines on what the episode covers and who's on it, then the chapters, then links. YouTube says tags play a minimal role in discovery, so put the effort here.
• Test the title. YouTube Studio's A/B testing tries up to 3 titles, thumbnails or both on a video and keeps the one with the highest share of watch time, usually within 2 weeks. It needs advanced features, runs on a computer, and isn't available for Shorts, or for Premieres until they've aired.

Chapters matter more for a podcast than for most videos: an hour-long conversation is many topics, and chapters let someone jump to the one they came for. List the times and titles in the description, with the first at 00:00, at least 3 of them in order, and each chapter 10 seconds or longer. Chapters need advanced features and a channel with no active strikes, and your own list replaces YouTube's automatic chapters. The free YouTube timestamp generator marks chapters as the episode plays or from its transcript, and checks them against those rules; the steps in Studio are in how to add timestamps to YouTube videos.

Thumbnails come in two shapes for a podcast: the square one for the podcast playlist, and a 16:9 one for each episode. YouTube recommends 3840 × 2160 for videos, at least 640 pixels wide, as a JPG or PNG, up to 50 MB from a computer (2 MB from a phone, or 10 MB for a podcast's). Custom thumbnails need a verified account.

• One face, a few words. The guest's or host's face, big, and three or four words of the topic that a phone can read.
• A template. The same layout, font and colors every week, so a regular spots the new episode, with the words changed for each one.
• Not the title again. The thumbnail and title sit side by side, so make them say two different things.

The free YouTube thumbnail maker makes a 16:9 thumbnail from a frame of your video, with a bold title, and previews it the way YouTube shows it.

As long as the conversation stays good. YouTube doesn't name an ideal length: its advice is to make videos “the appropriate length depending on the content”, and it says “relative watch time is more important for short videos and absolute watch time is more important for longer videos.” So an hour that holds people earns more watch time than twenty minutes that does, and an hour that sags earns less than its length suggests. The rise in podcast viewing on TVs is a sign that long episodes have an audience sitting back to watch.

• Cut the warm-up. Start on the first good line, and move the small talk and the ad reads out of the first minutes.
• Read the retention curve. In YouTube Studio, each episode's audience retention report shows where people leave. A dip at the same kind of segment every week is something to cut or move. What good looks like is in what is a good retention rate.
• Don't split one episode into parts to post more often: the podcast should hold full episodes, and Shorts do the job of short pieces better.

A weekly show is quiet six days a week unless you use the tools YouTube gives every channel:

• Posts. Choose Create, then Create post: text, up to 10 images, a video, a poll or a quiz, posted now or scheduled with the arrow next to Post. Posts show on your channel's Posts tab and can reach subscribers' home and Subscriptions feeds; image posts can show in the Shorts feed. YouTube's blog for podcasters gives the example of a post asking for questions for next week's guest. Posts aren't available on made-for-kids channels or in Germany, and there's a daily limit.
• Premieres. Set a new episode as a Premiere (when you schedule it, choose Set as Premiere) and it gets a watch page before it airs, where people can set a reminder and chat. Those who do are notified about 30 minutes before and when it starts. Premieres don't take Shorts or anything above 1080p.
• Comments. Answer them in the first hours after an episode goes up, and pin a question to start the thread. The best questions are next week's topics.

Shorts are where new listeners come from: YouTube says they average 200 billion daily views, and that Shorts performance “doesn't negatively impact long form Video recommendations.”

How many. An hour usually holds 5 to 10 moments that work on their own. On YouTube, post 3 to 5 Shorts from each weekly episode, spread over the week. Metricool's 2026 study of 799,718 YouTube videos found each Short did best at 2 to 4 a week. It also found long videos on channels posting about 5 Shorts a month got 46% more views than average, and that the lift was gone at 35 or more a month, though it says that's a correlation. Use the rest of each episode's clips on TikTok and Reels, where there's no episode to protect. Which moments to pick is in how to grow a podcast with clips.

How often. YouTube says there's no minimum posting cadence, and its Shorts tips say to stick to a schedule you can maintain. A steady rhythm for a weekly show: the strongest Short on episode day, the rest on the days between, and none on the day the next episode goes up, so it has the stage.

Linked back, every time. URLs in Shorts descriptions aren't clickable, so the link that works is the Short's related video: in YouTube Studio, open the Short under Content, choose the episode as its related video and save. Viewers see it under your channel handle. It needs advanced features, and the episode must be public or unlisted. Shorts made with Studio's own Clips and Shorts tool (on the episode, Clips and Shorts, then Create clip or Short) get the link automatically, unless they're private, unlisted or made for kids; its AI suggestions are in 10 countries so far. The steps for linking any Short are in how to link a YouTube Short to a video. To see whether it works, check the episode's traffic sources in Analytics, which count views from the Shorts feed.

Cutting five Shorts by hand means finding the moments in an hour, reframing two people into a vertical frame and captioning every word. Clyper does that for a whole episode: paste its YouTube link (or upload the file), and it scores every moment for how well it hooks and holds attention, keeps whoever's talking in frame and captions every word. On Auto it makes about 10 from an hour; ask for more and an hour can give up to 30. More in podcast clips with Clyper.