True Crime has become the most popular podcast topic among weekly U.S. listeners, surpassing Comedy for the first time since Edison Research began tracking the category in 2019, according to Q2 2026 Edison Podcast Metrics data.
In the first half of 2026, True Crime edged ahead of Comedy, which had held the top spot every year of the survey. The finding comes from Edison’s ongoing question to weekly podcast consumers ages 13 and older about which topics they ever listen to from a long list of options.
The shift continues a multi-year climb. True Crime ranked fifth in 2019. Its standing has risen steadily since then as flagship shows such as Crime Junkie, MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories, Rotten Mango, Dateline NBC, and Morbid drew large, loyal audiences.
Crime Junkie has frequently ranked as the second-most-reached podcast overall in Edison’s quarterly Top 50, behind only The Joe Rogan Experience. The genre itself, like podcasting, resists a single tidy definition. Listeners and researchers often say they know it when they hear it: narrative investigations of real crimes, unsolved cases, courtroom drama, and the psychology of offenders and victims.
That elasticity has helped it absorb related formats—mystery, thriller, and some news programming—while remaining distinct from Comedy, News, Politics, Sports, and Society & Culture.
Edison’s methodology has been consistent since 2019: large samples of weekly podcast consumers report both specific shows they heard or watched in the prior week and the broader topics they consume. The “ever listen to” topic question captures reach rather than time spent, which is why a genre can lead in popularity even when individual comedy or news titles still dominate raw audience size for single programs.
The rise tracks broader True Crime consumption across media. Earlier Edison work with audiochuck found that a large majority of U.S. adults consume True Crime in some form—television, books, social video, or podcasts—and that podcast listeners in the genre show high engagement and binge behavior. Weekly True Crime podcast audiences grew sharply after 2019, from an estimated 6.7 million adults 18+ in an average week that year to well over 19 million later in the decade.
Comedy remains a powerhouse, still filling many of the highest individual show rankings and retaining strong appeal. Politics, Entertainment/Celebrity, Sports, and News continue to occupy the next tier. But the Q2 2026 snapshot marks the first time True Crime sits alone at the top of the topic list that Edison has published since the start of its Podcast Metrics series.