Summer 2026 is packed with sporting events. Whether you’re a fan of baseball, cycling, combat sports, football, soccer, racing, or tennis, big, exciting athletic events are on the horizon.
If events like the US Open, Tour de France and Wimbledon are the main course, podcasts are their perfectly paired appetizers, whetting fans’ appetite for the live drama to come. In this story, we’ll walk you through the summer sporting events and suggest some solid sports podcasts to accompany you before and after you learn the winners.
baseball
The Major League Baseball season runs from spring to fall, with 162 games for each of the league’s 30 teams. The annual Major League Baseball All-Star Game sits at 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 you up to date with the American and national leagues all summer long, ESPN Baseball Tonight with Buster Olney A solid starting point. Olney is a longtime sports journalist with a baseball focus since 1989. He is also a reporter for Sunday Night Baseball and a senior writer for ESPN.com. He is the namesake of the show and its lead, but Baseball Tonight also features interviews with analysts and top baseball talent.
cycling
The Tour de France runs (ride?) from July 4-26, 2026. The Grand Départ starts the 3,333 km journey in Barcelona, Spain which ends at the Champs-Élysées in Paris, France. In the popular imagination, cycling’s continued recovery from more than a decade of intermittent scandals serves as an interesting backdrop as the sport and its regulatory bodies attempt to grapple with ongoing questions of credibility.
cycling podcast Founded in 2013 by Lionel Birney, Daniel Friebe and Richard Moore. The weekly show turns into a daily show during high-profile events like the Tour de France, with all the analysis and insight you’d expect from a team dedicated to the details of the sport.
golf
The golf summer is packed, with the British Open (or just The Open to Brits and golf insiders) as the premier summer tournament at Royal Birkdale GC in Southport, England from July 16-19, 2026.
no lying down is a golf-focused podcast that has been delivering analysis, news and interviews since its creation in 2014. It also has a great origin story: It started not as a podcast but as a group conversation between college friends.
Fall feels like football season, but the first NFL game is on September 9, 2026, and it beats fall by a few weeks. Then there’s also college football, which will 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 about the season. If you’re looking beyond that area, there are, by our rough calculations, 87 trillion football podcasts. But we have some suggestions for you – one to focus on the NFL and another to focus on college football.
The Ringer NFL Show is a popular podcast that focuses largely on the league. Hosted by Shail Kapadia, you’ll also find personalities from the big 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 game, but they aren’t actually played the same way. So it is with the world’s two biggest motorsports leagues, F1 and NASCAR, both having a summer full of races in 2026.
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 until December. The team of journalists behind the show includes Ben Anderson, Mark Hughes, John Noble, Scott Mitchell-Malm, Ed Straw and others. You’ll get pre- and post-race analysis and even a feed that includes more focused coverage from across the network.
download dell junior is dedicated to covering stock racing on behalf of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and TJ Majors, including the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series, which runs in November. Earnhardt is racing royalty, and his podcast features a solid mix of commentary, stories, and interviews in and out of the season.
football
The summer of football (or soccer, depending on your location and preference) revolves around the FIFA World Cup 2026. The largest-ever staging of the world’s most popular sport is already underway, spanning 38 days from June 11 to July 19, 2026, across Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Athletic FC Podcast This is a deep dive into the analysis of Adam Leventhal and Emma Patton with guest spots from multiple contributors and multiple journalists. During the World Cup, it is a six-day-a-week programme, designed to keep fans updated on the latest news and results. We would be remiss not to mention that The Rest Is Football also debuted on Netflix this year.
You may also like: Best NBA Podcasts
tennis
The two-stage tournament will return in the summer of 2026. Wimbledon will run from June 29 to July 12 at the All England Club in London. It has always been the world’s premier grass-court Grand Slam tennis tournament. And from August 23 to September 13, the U.S. Open Tennis Championship is the renowned hardcourt tennis tournament at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York City.
tennis podcast Bills itself as the “definitive tennis round up” and its popularity and accolades support this bold claim. Hosts David Law, Matt Roberts, Catherine Whitaker and others have a strong history of delivering timely analysis and news. Typically the weekly podcast ramps up during larger tournaments to provide more frequent coverage.
ufc
Stars tell the story of UFC’s biggest summer event. At UFC 329 on July 11, 2026, controversial fighter Conor McGregor and firebrand Max Holloway will enter the octagon together for a rematch 13 years after their last fight. There are a lot of (really small) fight nights scheduled for the summer, running about every week or two.
ufc unfiltered is the promotion’s official podcast, hosted by comedian Jim Norton and former UFC welterweight champion Matt Serra. You can also tune in for analysis, previews and post-match thoughts, as well as interviews with the ultimate fighters.
Wrestling
Is professional wrestling a sport? No? But this is also not-No A game – and its summer is certainly packed, from WWE’s first-ever, two-day SummerSlam on August 1-2 to the promotion-tackling AEW x NJPW Forbidden Doors event on June 28. And these are some of the biggest events.
natsom wrestling Broadcaster Sam Roberts recaps all things pro wrestling, from AEW to indie promotions, TNA and WWE. Roberts has been a lifelong wrestling fan, and he has managed to make that fan base and his knowledge of the business an important part of his career.
These great sports podcasts are solid starts for each event, but the sports podcasting ecosystem has more diversity in voices and perspectives than a NASCAR hood. Know what you like, and then do what we did: use that knowledge to find even more shows.
