Summer 2026 is supersaturated with sporting events. Whether you’re a fan of baseball, cycling, combat sports, football, soccer, racing, or tennis, big, exciting athletic competitions are on the horizon.
If events like the U.S. Open, the Tour de France, and Wimbledon are the main courses, then podcasts are their perfectly paired appetizers, whetting fans’ appetites for the live drama to come. In this story, we’ll walk you through the summer of sports events and suggest some solid sports podcasts to accompany them before and after we know the winners.
Baseball
Major League Baseball’s season stretches from spring to fall, packed with 162 games for each of the league’s 30 teams. The annual Major League Baseball All-Star Game sits at something like the halfway point of both the baseball and calendar seasons, which explains its “Midsummer Classic” nickname.
If you’re looking for a show to keep abreast of the American and National Leagues throughout the summer, ESPN’s Baseball Tonight with Buster Olney is a solid starting point. Olney is a longtime sports journalist whose baseball focus dates back to 1989. He’s also a reporter for Sunday Night Baseball and a senior writer for ESPN.com. He’s the name on the show and its lead, but Baseball Tonight features analysts and interviews with top baseball talent, too.
Cycling
The Tour de France runs (rides?) from July 4-26, 2026. The Grand Départ in Barcelona, Spain begins a 3,333 km journey that culminates at the Champs-Élysées in Paris, France. In the popular imagination, cycling’s ongoing recovery from more than a decade of intermittent scandals serves as an interesting backdrop as the sport and its regulating bodies attempt to grapple with ongoing questions of credibility.
The Cycling Podcast was founded by Lionel Birnie, Daniel Friebe, and Richard Moore in 2013. The weekly show transforms into a daily show during high-profile events like the Tour de France, with all of the analysis and insights you’d expect from a team dedicated to the details of the sport.
Golf
Golf’s summer is packed, with the British Open (or just The Open to Brits and golf insiders) as the flagship summer tournament taking place at Royal Birkdale GC in Southport, England from July 16-19, 2026. The runup to the final major tournament of the year is filled with less high-profile tournaments, so there’s plenty of golf to be played yet this year.
No Laying Up is a golf-focused podcast that’s been delivering analysis, news, and interviews since its creation in 2014. It’s got a great origin story, too: It began not as a podcast but as a group conversation between college friends.
Football: NFL and NCAA
Fall feels like football season, but the first NFL game is on Sept. 9, 2026, and that beats the fall by a few weeks. Plus there’s college football that’ll be in full swing by then.
Earlier this summer, we wrote a guide to the best NFL football podcasts, and many of those recommendations will keep you informed on the season. If you’re looking beyond that niche, there are, by our rough count, 87 trillion football podcasts. But we’ve got a couple of suggestions for you — one to focus on the NFL and one to focus on college football.
The Ringer NFL Show is a popular podcast focused broadly on the league. Hosted by Sheil Kapadia, you’ll also find personalities from the larger Ringer network and a focus on news, rankings, and predictions.
Cover 3 College Football from CBS Sports with Bud Elliott, Tom Fornelli, Danny Kanell, and Chip Patterson. Head there for analysis and previews and even picks from the regular season through the playoffs.
Motorsports
NFL football and NCAA football are the same sport, but they’re not really played the same way. So it is with the two biggest motorsports leagues in the world, F1 and NASCAR, both of which have race-filled summers in 2026.
The Race F1 Podcast is a daily show dedicated to news (and gossip), rankings, and detailed track analysis from the 2026 FIA Formula One World Championship, which runs through December. The team of journalists behind the show includes Ben Anderson, Mark Hughes, Jon Noble, Scott Mitchell-Malm, Edd Straw, and more. You’ll also find pre- and post-race analysis and even a feed that incorporates more focused coverage from across the network.
The Dale Jr. Download from Dale Earnhardt Jr. and TJ Majors is dedicated to covering stock racing, including the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series, which runs into November. Earnhardt is racing royalty, and his podcast has a solid mix of commentary, stories, and interviews in and out of season.
Soccer
The summer of soccer (or football, depending on your location and preference) revolves around the FIFA World Cup 2026. The biggest event in the world’s most popular sport is already underway, running for 38 days across Canada, Mexico, and the United States from June 11 to July 19, 2026.
The Athletic FC Podcast is a deep-dive of analysis from Adam Leventhal and Emma Paton with several contributors and guest spots from loads of reporters. During the World Cup, it’s a six-days-a-week affair, designed to keep fans updated with the latest news and results. We’d be remiss not to mention that The Rest is Football made its Netflix debut this year, too.
You might also like: The Best NBA Podcasts
Tennis
Two storied tournaments return in the summer of 2026. Wimbledon runs from June 29 through July 12 at the All England Club in London. It’s perennially the world’s premier grass-court Grand Slam tennis. And from August 23 through September 13, there's the U.S. Open Tennis Championship, the storied hardcourt tennis tournament at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York City.
The Tennis Podcast bills itself as the “definitive tennis round up,” and its popularity and accolades back up the bold claim. Hosts David Law, Matt Roberts, Catherine Whitaker, and more have a strong history of delivering timely analysis and news. The typically weekly podcast ramps up to offer more frequent coverage during big tournaments.
UFC
The stars tell the story of the UFC’s biggest summer event. On July 11, 2026 at UFC 329, controversial fighter Conor McGregor and firebrand Max Holloway will enter the octagon together for a rematch 13 years after their last fight. There are plenty of (de facto smaller) Fight Nights scheduled for the summer, running roughly every week or two throughout.
UFC Unfiltered is the promotion’s official podcast, with hosts comedian Jim Norton and former UFC welterweight champion Matt Serra. You can tune in for analysis, previews, and post-match thoughts, as well as interviews with ultimate fighters.
Wrestling
Is professional wrestling a sport? No? But also it’s not-not a sport -, and its summer is certainly packed, from WWE’s first-ever, two-day SummerSlam on August 1-2 to the promotion-colliding AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door event on June 28. And that’s just a couple of the biggest events.
Notsam Wrestling is broadcaster Sam Roberts’ recap of all things pro wrestling, from AEW to indie promotions, TNA, and WWE. Roberts is a lifelong wrestling fan, and he’s managed to make that fandom and his knowledge of the business a significant part of his career.
These great sports podcasts are solid beginnings for each event, but voices and perspectives in the sports podcasting ecosystem have more variations than NASCAR hoods. Learn what you like, and then do what we did: Use that knowledge to find even more shows.
