Which is either ambitious or reckless, and I’ll let you know in October. It has also produced the same question from nearly everyone I’ve talked to this summer: what’s actually happening?

So here’s the whole week’s breakdown, along with the answers to your most common questions.

The Business Summit, Monday and Tuesday

This is the buy side and the sell side of podcasting in one room at Terminal 5 on September 14 and 15. It’s our big swing to create more value for the entire podcast ecosystem in just two days.

The lineup is coming together in a way that we are truly proud of. Ira Glass, Don Lemon, and Rich Roll are confirmed. So are YouTube, Apple, and Scalable, and Flight Story is bringing Maggie Sellers of Hot Smart Rich. It’s a media lineup rather than a podcasting one, and that’s intentional, because the people we’re bringing in to buy don’t think of themselves as just podcast buyers, and neither should you.

There will be big announcements from our stage too: Crooked Media will be announcing major news at the event that they haven’t shared anywhere else. But what makes this event truly unique is that not one minute of stage time is for sale. We built this event together with our partners. There is zero “pay for play” at this event or the main Podcast Movement. We have stripped this event down to two, singular experiences to make each one special.

Because of that, the content you’ll hear is vetted, never heard before, and rooted in fact. If you’re looking for another panel with arbitrary thoughts on measurement or AI, you will be the one disappointed person in the audience.

There are also over 125 brands and buyers registered already. And I mean actual buyers, from the holding companies, the agencies, and brands direct. Not one of them has bought a ticket, because we don’t charge the buy side to attend our events: the entire job of this event is getting them in front of you, and a paywall between a seller and a buyer is a strange thing for a trade association to build.

There are workshops, and new research in every content block, some of it ours and some from partners releasing it there first. The format is ten-minute segments totaling around an hour per block, with long networking windows in between that are fully catered too.

Everybody I’ve ever met at an event like this tells me the same thing afterward: the hallway was the best part. So, we built a concert venue-sized hallway to enable more networking and greater deals.

And on Monday, September 14, we’re hosting a Run Club with Voicing Change Media and Zac Clark, if you’d rather open the week in motion.

Can anyone buy a ticket to the Summit?

No, and it’s the question we get most.

Sounds Profitable is the trade association for the podcast industry, and the Business Summit is an event for the association’s partners. If your company is a partner, you’re eligible to buy up to two tickets here and submit a request for additional tickets at half price. If your company is not a partner, the conversation to have is about partnership rather than tickets, and that’s one email away.

Our partners are the 220+ companies funding the work of expanding this industry: the research we give away, the education we do with buyers and brands still learning what podcasting can do for them, the advocacy, the careers built on the back of all of it. Somebody has to pay for that, and they do. They have now for the last six years, and we are grateful for their support. The Summit is one of the things they get access to for it. If you support what we’re trying to do here, there’s a version of this where you’re in that room, and I’d like you to be. Talk to us about partnership!

Does my Summit ticket get me into the rest of the week?

The Summit and the Podcast Movement days are separate events on separate tickets. If you want Monday and Tuesday plus Thursday and Friday, you need both tickets.

Wednesday Night, the IAB Podcast Upfront After Party

The IAB Podcast Upfront is Wednesday, September 16. The official after party for it is ours, at our venue, from 5pm to 8pm.

Being the official after party matters more than a party normally would, because it means the entire buyside of the industry finishes its day at the IAB Upfront and walks into our building. It also kicks off Podcast Movement and brings together the entire industry in one space.

We’re excited to announce the entertainment for the evening, provided with support from JoneKiri is a live taping of Dana Gould’s Hanging with Dr. Z, the one where he conducts the interviews in full Planet of the Apes makeup. The doctor tells us he’s reaching back into his catalog to bring some of the best guests he’s had to date on stage with him, including Sam Morril and Dave Hill. And we’re still exploring the opportunity to add more live performances.

Do I need a ticket for Wednesday?

You need a ticket to something, and any one of three of them work: the Business Summit, Podcast Movement, or the IAB Podcast Upfront itself. Any of those three gets you in the door. We’ll have an RSVP link so we know how many of you to expect at the bar.

Is Wednesday a networking thing or a party?

You are correct.

Podcast Movement, Thursday and Friday

Thursday, September 17 and Friday, September 18 are the creator days, and this is the biggest change we’ve made to Podcast Movement in its history.

Over eighty sessions on five stages, plus four keynotes I think will be worth the ticket on their own. Half the sessions were chosen by public vote out of more than 750 submissions from more than 500 speakers, and the other half by an independent committee whose entire job was to find the good stuff the popular vote missed. Our team had no say in either half.

Nobody could buy a session at Podcast Movement, and there’s no expo hall either. In a universe where a distressing amount of conference programming is a media buy wearing a lanyard, that’s the promise we’re making, and you should hold us to it.

I’ll also be opening Thursday with the release of Podcast Landscape 2026, our biggest study of the year, live from the main stage.

When do we find out the full session lineup?

Speakers have been notified, and we’re aiming to post the full roster tomorrow (August 13), once everyone has confirmed, with the full schedule very soon after.

We announced the first half of programming last week, which was selected by our community voting. You’ll hear from industry experts including: Paul Riismandel, Lemya Solatani, Max Branstetter, Shantae Howell, Allyson Marino, Gogo Zoger, Doug Downs, and more. Coming next even more community favorites, as selected by our all-star nine-person committee. And, like the Business Summit, no one is on stage who didn’t earn it – no sessions were paid for.

What does it cost?

$199 for both days, which as far as I can tell makes it the least expensive conference ticket in podcasting. That’s deliberate.

The Summit costs what it costs so that Thursday and Friday can cost $199 for two days in Manhattan, with no expo hall and no session anybody paid to be in. We did a little Robin Hood on our partners, and they knew it. Selling the program is the normal way to make a creator event cheap, and it’s the one lever we won’t pull, so the money comes from the other room and the creator days stay as focused on creator voices as we can make them. Every piece of research we release that week goes out free to everyone reading this, whether you were in the building or not.

To see it all unfold live, get your tickets here.

Do I need to be a Sounds Profitable partner to come Thursday and Friday?

No. The creator days are open to everybody, and they always will be. There will be loads of partners there for you to network with. Just buy a ticket already!

What Happens at Four O’Clock

One more thing, and it’s the smallest item on this list. On a planning call a while back I asked what an introvert, or a first-timer, is supposed to do at four o’clock on Thursday, when the sessions are over and everybody who already knows everybody is off to a dinner organized in a group chat you’re not in. Nobody had a good answer, so we built one: an end-of-day block on Thursday where the meetups are proposed and hosted by the people attending, in space we’re setting aside for it. Run one if you want to, or just walk into one.

That’s the part I’m proudest of so far, because the whole argument for putting three events in one building for one week is that this industry is more useful to itself in person than it is on LinkedIn. And that argument falls apart at four o’clock if nobody knows where to stand.

Come to New York! There’s no conference hotel, so you can stay where you want, even in Jersey. No one will judge you. But if you need a recommendation on where to stay, here’s a few suggestions from us.