Signal Awards 2026 winners: Poehler, Lewinsky and Wild Card take gold
The Signal Awards named their 2026 winners on Tuesday, October 20, and the biggest names took gold: Amy Poehler for Good Hang with Amy Poehler, Monica Lewinsky for Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky, and NPR’s Wild Card with Rachel Martin as Best Video Podcast. The full list is long; the headline results are below.
This is the fifth year of the awards, which add a public Listener’s Choice vote to the judged categories. The announcement says the vote drew more than 260,000 votes from 94,000 people, and that entries in the video categories nearly doubled from last year. The winners party is Monday, November 9 at 501 Union in Brooklyn.
The headline winners
| Show | Made by | Award |
|---|---|---|
| Good Hang with Amy Poehler | The Ringer (Spotify) | Gold, Best Host, plus Listener’s Choice; Silver, Best Video Podcast |
| Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky | Prufrock LLC | Gold, Best Host (Culture) |
| Wild Card with Rachel Martin | NPR | Gold, Best Video Podcast; Silver, Best Host |
| Las Culturistas | Big Money Players Network and iHeartPodcasts | Gold, Best Video Podcast Co-Host Team |
| The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos | iHeartPodcasts | Gold, Best New Podcast |
| All There Is with Anderson Cooper | CNN | Gold, Best Video Podcast |
| Dinner’s On Me with Jesse Tyler Ferguson | Sony Music Entertainment | Gold, Lifestyle |
| Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso | Higher Ground | Gold, Best Host |
| Joe and Jada | iHeartPodcasts and The Volume | Gold, Best Guest (Fat Joe, for the Bill Burr episode) |
| Paper Trail | ProPublica | Gold, Documentary, plus Listener’s Choice |
| Khloé in Wonder Land | Khloé Kardashian | Silver, Best Host (Culture) |
| Club Shay Shay | Shay Shay Media and Playmaker | Silver, Pop Culture |
| Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files | Global | Silver, Best Host |
Two results stand out below the headline rows. Shell Game, journalist Evan Ratliff’s series about things that are not what they seem, most recently AI-generated content, took gold for Best Application of Emerging Technology. And Kevin Hart and Dr. Vivek Murthy both took silver, Hart for Kids Make Me Angry and the former Surgeon General for Staying Human, which only launched in May.
Phoebe Judge and Pablo Torre get the honorary awards
Two individual honors go beyond the categories. Phoebe Judge, host and co-creator of Criminal, receives the Audio Icon Award. “Podcasting has changed so much since we started in 2014, and it means very much to be recognized,” she said.
Pablo Torre receives the Special Achievement Award for Pablo Torre Finds Out, the show whose Clippers reporting we covered in September. The show also won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting. Torre called it “an honor to receive an award that encourages our show’s experimentation.”
iHeartPodcasts is Company of the Year and iHeartMedia’s Ruby Studios is Agency of the Year, which, with Las Culturistas, The Moment and Joe and Jada all taking gold, makes this a good week for iHeart.
Where the winners sit in our charts
- Good Hang with Amy Poehler: No. 10 in our Top 100 and No. 2 among comedy podcasts.
- Criminal, Reclaiming, Wild Card, Las Culturistas and All There Is all have PlayPodcast pages, but none is in our Top 100 this week. Awards juries and listeners do not always agree.
- The Daily, No. 1 in our Top 100, is not in the announcement, but it is up for an Astra award (below).
Next up: the Astra Podcast Awards on November 11
A day after the Signal results, the Hollywood Creative Alliance published the nominees for its Astra Podcast Awards, which will be handed out on Wednesday, November 11 at The Garland Hotel in Studio City. Good Hang is up for Best Celebrity Podcast against Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, and the comedy category pits Call Her Daddy against SmartLess and This Past Weekend with Theo Von. Crime Junkie, No. 2 in our Top 100, is nominated for Best True Crime, and The Daily for Best Topical News.
The Signal winners party is November 9 in Brooklyn; the Astra ceremony is two days later in Studio City.
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