# The State of Identity Podcasts 2026: Every Active Show, Counted and Sorted

Source: https://startwithidentity.com/articles/state-of-identity-podcasts-2026/
Last updated: 2026-10-01
License: content by Start with Identity. Cite the source URL.

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On October 1, 2026 we read the feed of every identity podcast in the [Start with Identity podcast directory](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/): 22 shows whose main subject is identity and access management, digital identity, or identity security. Fourteen had published an episode in the previous 60 days. Eleven of the 22 are produced by vendors, yet vendor shows account for six of the seven that have stopped publishing. And two well-known shows can no longer be played from their own feeds at all. This is the full count, how we made it, and what it says about where to spend your listening time.

## How we counted

A show is in scope when identity is its main subject, not an occasional guest topic, so general security podcasts such as Security Now and Risky Business are excluded from the counts even though single episodes from them appear in our [learning paths](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/learn/). For each show we read the RSS feed, checked hosts and publisher against the publisher's own pages, and recorded the date of the newest episode. Status follows the same rules as the directory:

- **Active:** an episode in the last 60 days.
- **Irregular:** 61 to 180 days.
- **Dormant:** more than 180 days, with no announced end.
- **Ended:** the show or its host has said it is finished.

Starting points for discovery included Feedspot's identity podcast list, Apple Podcasts search, and publisher sites. Discovery lists are not evidence: every fact below comes from a show's own feed or site. The directory's feed job re-runs weekly, so the live status on each profile may have moved since this was written.

## The headline numbers

| Measure | Count |
|---|---|
| Identity shows tracked | 22 |
| Active (episode in last 60 days) | 14 |
| Irregular | 1 |
| Dormant | 6 |
| Ended | 1 |
| Published items across all 22 feeds | about 3,070 |
| Shows launched in 2025 | 6 |
| Shows whose own feed no longer plays | 2 |

The item count is approximate because feeds mix full episodes with trailers, short clips, and daily digests. [Root Causes](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/root-causes/), from certificate authority [Sectigo](https://startwithidentity.com/vendors/pki/sectigo/), is the most prolific by far at about 670 short episodes since 2019. [Identity at the Center](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/identity-at-the-center/) has the largest archive of long-form identity conversation, at more than 450 episodes since July 2019.

## Who publishes identity podcasts

| Publisher type | Shows | Active | Dormant or ended |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor | 11 | 5 | 6 |
| Independent | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Analyst firm | 3 | 1 | 1 (plus 1 irregular) |
| Trade media | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Community group | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Nonprofit | 1 | 1 | 0 |

Half of identity podcasting is vendor-funded. That is not a problem in itself, and several vendor shows are good. The pattern that matters is survival. Of the seven shows no longer publishing regularly, six are vendor productions:

- **Identity, Unlocked** from [Auth0](https://startwithidentity.com/vendors/ciam/auth0/) ended in 2022, and its host Vittorio Bertocci died in October 2023.
- **Mistaken Identity** from [Okta](https://startwithidentity.com/vendors/iam/okta/) ran one season in 2023.
- **Let's Talk About Digital Identity** from Ubisecure stopped in January 2024.
- **401 Access Denied** from [Delinea](https://startwithidentity.com/vendors/pam/delinea/) stopped in February 2025.
- **The Identity Heroes** from Strata Identity stopped in October 2025.
- **Security Matters** from [CyberArk](https://startwithidentity.com/vendors/pam/cyberark/) went silent in March 2026, a month after Palo Alto Networks completed its acquisition, and its feed now returns an error.

The seventh, [State of Identity](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/state-of-identity/) from analyst firm Liminal, has published nothing since May 2024. Vendor shows end when marketing priorities or ownership change, and they rarely say so. If you subscribe to one, expect it to stop without notice.

## Even "independent" shows have ties

We class four shows as independent. Three of them carry a commercial connection worth knowing about, all disclosed on their directory profiles:

- **Identity at the Center** runs paid "Sponsor Spotlight" episodes alongside its regular interviews.
- **[Entra.Chat](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/entra-chat/)** is hosted by a Microsoft employee and covers [Microsoft Entra](https://startwithidentity.com/vendors/iam/microsoft-entra/) exclusively.
- **[The Identity Jedi Show](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/identity-jedi-show/)** is hosted by the field CTO of [Saviynt](https://startwithidentity.com/vendors/iga/saviynt/), who also co-hosts Saviynt's own podcast.

Only [A Digital Identity Digest](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/a-digital-identity-digest/), from standards consultant Heather Flanagan, has no product vendor connection we could find. None of this makes the shows less useful. It does mean "independent" is a spectrum, which is why we wrote a separate guide on [telling vendor and independent shows apart](https://startwithidentity.com/blog/vendor-podcasts-vs-independent-shows/).

## Where the useful episodes come from

Counting shows says little about quality, so we also counted the 134 episodes we selected for our ten [learning paths](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/learn/): ordered lists that take a listener from basics to standards-level depth on one topic.

| Source of selected episodes | Episodes | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Independent shows | 61 | 46% |
| Vendor shows | 31 | 23% |
| Analyst shows | 25 | 19% |
| General security and developer shows | 11 | 8% |
| Media, community, and nonprofit shows | 6 | 4% |

Vendor shows are half the directory but under a quarter of the episodes worth recommending. The exception is identity attacks. Eight of the 15 episodes on our [identity threats and ITDR path](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/learn/identity-threats-itdr/) come from vendor shows, mostly CyberArk's red team and [Semperis](https://startwithidentity.com/vendors/itdr/semperis/)'s incident responders, because those teams publish breach analysis that independent shows rarely match. On [zero trust](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/learn/zero-trust/), by contrast, only one of 13 selected episodes is vendor-made.

Three shows supply most of the depth: Identity at the Center (37 selected episodes), [KuppingerCole Analyst Chat](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/kuppingercole-analyst-chat/) (23), and Entra.Chat (17). The selected episodes skew recent, with 63 of the 134 published in 2025 or 2026, and the median length is 43 minutes.

## 2025 was a launch year

Six of the 22 shows launched in 2025: Entra.Chat, A Digital Identity Digest, The Biometric Update Podcast, [The Non-Human & AI Identity Podcast](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/non-human-ai-identity-podcast/), The Identity Heroes, and SaviTalk. Five are still publishing. The new shows are narrower than the older ones: one platform, one standards voice, one topic ([non-human identity](https://startwithidentity.com/guides/fundamentals/what-is-non-human-identity/)), one trade newsroom. The general-purpose identity conversation is still carried mainly by shows that started in 2019 and 2020.

## Two shows you cannot play from their feeds

Both Identity, Unlocked and Mistaken Identity route their audio through Chartable, an analytics service that has shut down. Its tracking domain now redirects to a spam survey site, so Apple Podcasts and any other app that reads those feeds plays nothing. Spotify kept its own copies, and our profiles and learning paths now link there. Six Identity, Unlocked episodes on OAuth 2.1, the OAuth security best current practice, CAEP, and FastFed could not be found on Spotify, so they are missing from our paths even though they were among the best audio explainers of those specs. Our weekly feed check now tests that each show's newest audio file actually plays.

## Who does not have a podcast

We looked for official shows from the FIDO Alliance, the OpenID Foundation, [Ping Identity](https://startwithidentity.com/vendors/iam/ping-identity/), and Microsoft, and found none. The standards bodies reach podcast audiences as guests on other shows: FIDO's leaders appear on Identity at the Center and The Biometric Update Podcast, and OpenID Foundation contributors anchor much of our [OAuth and OpenID Connect path](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/learn/oauth-oidc/).

## The gaps

Some topics have no strong dedicated episode on any show we track. If you host an identity podcast, these are open:

- **Kerberoasting** and other Active Directory credential attacks, explained for defenders.
- **MFA fatigue** and push-bombing, as a technique rather than a news item.
- **Scattered Spider**'s help desk playbook, beyond news coverage.
- **Workload identity federation** in practice.
- **PAM session recording** and session management.
- **Progressive profiling** in customer identity.

## The 14 active shows

| Show | Publisher | Type | Since |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Identity at the Center](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/identity-at-the-center/) | Independent | Independent | 2019 |
| [Root Causes](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/root-causes/) | Sectigo | Vendor | 2019 |
| [The ID Talk Podcast](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/id-talk-podcast/) | ID Tech (Verse Media) | Media | 2019 |
| [KuppingerCole Analyst Chat](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/kuppingercole-analyst-chat/) | KuppingerCole | Analyst | 2020 |
| [Hybrid Identity Protection Podcast](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/hybrid-identity-protection/) | Semperis | Vendor | 2020 |
| [Trust Talks & Digital Dives](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/trust-talks-digital-dives/) | DIACC | Nonprofit | 2021 |
| [The Identity Jedi Show](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/identity-jedi-show/) | Independent | Independent | 2022 |
| [The Future of Identity](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/the-future-of-identity/) | Trinsic | Vendor | 2023 |
| [Identity Matters](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/sailpoint-identity-matters/) | SailPoint | Vendor | 2024 |
| [Entra.Chat](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/entra-chat/) | Independent (entra.news) | Independent | 2025 |
| [The Biometric Update Podcast](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/biometric-update-podcast/) | Biometric Update | Media | 2025 |
| [A Digital Identity Digest](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/a-digital-identity-digest/) | Spherical Cow Consulting | Independent | 2025 |
| [SaviTalk](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/savitalk/) | Saviynt | Vendor | 2025 |
| [The Non-Human & AI Identity Podcast](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/non-human-ai-identity-podcast/) | NHI Mgmt Group | Community | 2025 |

[The Analyst Brief](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/the-analyst-brief/), from The Cyber Hut, is irregular rather than dormant; its last episode was in June 2026. The Future of Identity comes from [Trinsic](https://startwithidentity.com/vendors/decentralized-identity/trinsic/), and Identity Matters from [SailPoint](https://startwithidentity.com/vendors/iga/sailpoint/).

## Use the data

The numbers in this report are generated from the same data behind the [podcast directory](https://startwithidentity.com/podcasts/), which updates weekly. Cite this page with its date. If you publish an identity podcast we missed, or a fact here is wrong, email community@startwithidentity.com with the feed URL. Listing is free and we do not accept payment for inclusion.