Acast becomes the first global platform to join Spain’s Audio Academy

Acast becomes the first global platform to join Spain’s Audio Academy

The move reinforces the company’s commitment to supporting the development and professionalisation of Spain’s podcast sector and to advancing its institutional recognition as a cultural industry.

Madrid, March 2026 - Acast, the world’s largest pure-play podcast company, has joined the Academia de las Artes, las Ciencias y la Industria del Audio en Español (Spain’s Audio Academy), becoming the first global platform in the sector to become a member of the organisation.

With this step, Acast aligns with the objectives of the Audio Academy, established in 2025 to consolidate Spanish-language audio as a cultural and economic industry, support its professionalisation and strengthen its institutional representation.

“For Acast, joining the Audio Academy is a way to support the development of a strong, professional and institutionally recognised podcast ecosystem,” said Megan Davies, Managing Director, International, at Acast. “We’re proud to announce our membership at a time when the Academy’s work is beginning to deliver results, including the recent commitment from Spain’s Ministry of Culture to open a joint working group aimed at advancing the recognition of audio as a cultural industry.”

Ricardo Dómine, President of the Audio Academy, said: “We welcome Acast’s joining the Academia del Audio as a very significant milestone for the industry as a whole. The fact that a global platform of this scale is becoming part of the initiative strengthens the work we have been driving to promote the professionalisation, cohesion and institutional recognition of Spanish-language audio as a cultural industry. We hope this will be the first of many such commitments and that other platforms and media organisations across the sector will also join this collective effort.”

Acast was founded in 2014, when podcasting was still a niche format with no clear revenue model for creators, introducing one of the key technological advances for the industry: dynamic ad insertion. This innovation enabled podcast monetisation at scale and helped democratise revenue for podcasters. Today, Acast connects more than 140,000 creators with 4,000 advertisers globally and has offices in 15 countries.

In the words of Megan Davies, “Acast entered the Spanish market in 2022 recognising the enormous potential of the country’s podcast landscape. Just a few years later, Spain plays a strategic role within the European podcast ecosystem, consolidating its position as a cultural and economic industry with long-term potential — one we are proud to support both as a platform and now as members of the Academy.”

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