The Washington Post just handed its podcast future to Acast. Here is what that actually means

Five months ago The Washington Post canceled Post Reports, its flagship daily news podcast. This month it told the industry how it plans to make podcasts again: by letting somebody else do it.

The Swedish podcast company Acast confirmed the partnership in its second-quarter interim report on 23 July 2026, naming the Post among the premium publishers that joined its network during the quarter. Trade reporting a few days later filled in the shape of the deal, and it is a bigger shift than a single newspaper’s programming decision. It is a working example of where mid-sized publishers are heading when they can no longer afford an in-house audio department.

What has been confirmed

Acast’s Q2 2026 report is a regulatory filing, so the numbers in it are firm. The company posted net sales of SEK 775.6 million, up 28% year on year and 29% on an organic basis, with North America growing 34% and Europe 25%. Adjusted EBITDA came in at SEK 57.7 million, lifting the adjusted EBITDA margin to 7% from 3% a year earlier. Operating profit was SEK 31.6 million and operating cash flow SEK 50.1 million.

One pair of figures in that report matters more than the headline growth. Listens and views rose just 2%, to 1,120 million. Average revenue per listen or view rose 26%, to SEK 0.69. Acast is not growing because more people are listening. It is growing because each listen is worth substantially more than it was a year ago.

The report also names The Washington Post directly as a publisher partner added in the quarter, alongside The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast and The Comment Section with Drew Afualo.

What the companies have said

Greg Glenday, Acast’s chief executive, commented in the report: “Acast delivered another quarter of strong growth in Q2 2026, as we continued to create even greater value for both advertisers and creators across our platform.”

According to trade coverage published on 27 July, the partnership will launch with new audio and video shows fronted by Post journalists: syndicated advice columnist Carolyn Hax, personal finance columnist Michelle Singletary, and Style writer Shane O’Neill, author of the Seriously? pop culture newsletter. Acast Productions is developing and producing the shows. When they launch, Acast becomes the exclusive global partner for sales, distribution and monetisation. Further audio and video involving Post Opinions writers, including Kate Andrews, Carine Hajjar, James Hohmann and Adam O’Neal, is reported to be in development.

Those show-level details come from trade reporting rather than a joint press release, and neither company has published a full announcement at the time of writing.

Why a columnist, and not a newsroom

The choice of talent tells you what the Post learned from Post Reports.

A daily news podcast is expensive in exactly the way a newspaper can least afford. It needs a standing team, it has to ship every weekday, and its audience arrives for the news rather than for anyone in particular. Cancel it and the audience disperses, because the audience was never really yours.

Hax, Singletary and O’Neill are the opposite proposition. Each already has a durable readership that follows the writer rather than the section. Advice, personal finance and pop culture also sell advertising more comfortably than hard news does, and they date slowly enough that a back catalog keeps earning. This is a publisher building around columnists it already pays, not around a newsroom function it has to staff twice.

What it means to the industry

In the near term, very little changes for the shows you already follow. Acast distributes to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and the rest, so nothing here pushes Post podcasts behind a single app.

Over a longer horizon it does change the mix. Daily news podcasts from newspapers have been thinning out for two years, The Daily and a handful of others aside; personality-led shows from those same newsrooms have not. If the Post model works, expect more publishers to retire the daily briefing and reappear as a handful of named-host shows with an outside company selling the ads. Whether that is a loss depends on whether you were listening for the newspaper or for the person.

Video is part of the same calculation. Acast reported launching its first integrated video advertising campaigns on Apple Podcasts in May, with State Farm and T-Mobile as launch advertisers, and said more than 180 shows are now video-enabled with over 1,000 episodes published. The Post shows are described as audio and video from the start, which is the point: a columnist works on camera in a way a rolling news bulletin does not.

Analysis: what we think happens next

The following is our own reading, not confirmed by either company.

The interesting number in Acast’s quarter is that 2% listen growth. A company whose audience is flat but whose revenue per listen is up 26% is one that has decided its growth will come from selling existing inventory better, and from signing publishers who bring audiences with them. That makes deals like the Post one strategically necessary rather than opportunistic, and it suggests more of them are coming — probably from regional and mid-sized publishers that cut audio staff in 2024 and 2025 and now want back in without rebuilding.

The risk sits with the publishers. Handing sales, distribution and monetisation to one exclusive global partner is efficient, and it also means your podcast business is now a line in someone else’s earnings report. That is a comfortable position while growth holds. It is a harder one if it does not.

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