Spotify just handed 35 new countries a podcast paycheck.

Spotify just widened its Partner Program to more than 35 new countries, the biggest single-day expansion of a major creator-payout program in 2026. Eligible podcasters in Italy, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Chile, and 30-plus other markets can now earn Premium-video revenue and a 50% cut of Spotify-sold ads. The walled-garden era of podcast monetization is dead. Latin America and Southern Europe just got the same rails as the US.

What actually happened?

On September 17, 2026, Spotify announced the largest geographic expansion of its Partner Program since the payout system launched in January 2025 in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, per Spotify Newsroom. Newly eligible countries include Italy, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and a swath of Central American and Caribbean markets. Creators in those markets now unlock Premium-video revenue tied to Spotify subscriber engagement plus a 50% share of ads Spotify sells against their shows, on and off the platform, according to TechCrunch.

Creators keep 100% of the revenue from any sponsorships they arrange themselves and can continue distributing to third-party platforms. The timing follows a January 2026 eligibility cut that slashed the bar to 3 published episodes, 2,000 consumption hours, and 1,000 engaged listeners in the last 30 days, down roughly 80% from the original thresholds, Tubefilter reported. Spotify says video shows in the Partner Program have grown consumption hours by more than 45% on average since launch, and monthly payouts to enrolled shows are up more than a third since January's eligibility change.

Why does this matter for creators?

For a podcaster in São Paulo or Milan, September 17 is the day monetization stopped being an American privilege. A modest audience of 1,000 engaged listeners and 2,000 monthly consumption hours is now enough to plug into the same payout rails as a New York or London show. That is a genuine unlock, particularly for niche shows in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, or Polish that were previously locked out of Spotify's ad-share economy entirely.

The scale context matters too. Spotify paid more than $100 million to podcast creators globally in Q1 2025 alone, its first full quarter with the program live, per Entrepreneur. Adding 35 markets in one drop is not a rounding error. It is the single largest widening of a major creator-payout pool this year, and it lands in a moment when YouTube's Partner Program has been the default assumption for anyone chasing global video-podcast income.

Video is the real subtext. Spotify says the average listener now streams twice as many video shows per month than before the Partner Program launched, and superfans stream nearly 20 times more of a show than casual listeners, per Podcast News Daily. Premium subscribers in the newly eligible markets will see fewer dynamic ads on participating video podcasts, which is Spotify's pitch to fans, but it also means creators depend more than ever on the platform's ad-sales team to fill the inventory that remains.

"This is about expanding opportunity and making sure creators who are gaining real momentum on Spotify can benefit from it. It's about supporting an ecosystem where even more voices can succeed."

Maya Prohovnik, VP of Podcast Product, Spotify

Where does this go from here?

Spotify is racing YouTube for the video-podcast center of gravity, and geographic expansion is the fastest lever it has left. Since the Partner Program launched, monthly video podcast consumption on Spotify has nearly doubled, according to TheWrap. Spotify also decoupled payouts from its own hosting in August 2026, so a show can now sit on Acast, Libsyn, Audioboom, Omny, or Podigee and still cash Spotify checks. That change alone made the January 2026 eligibility cut usable for shows that had already invested in a different host.

Watch two things next. First, whether Spotify pushes into markets it skipped this round, notably India, Japan, and most of Africa, where podcast listening is growing but ad-revenue-per-listener is thin. Second, whether the 50/50 ad split holds. Creators in the new markets are entering a monetization system where the platform still keeps half the ad dollar and controls the opaque engagement math that meters Premium-video payouts, per Spotify Support.

What does Fanvault think?

This is a real unlock, but it should not be confused with a fair one. Spotify keeping 50% of every ad it monetizes against your show is the same math that made creators skeptical of platform payouts in the first place, dressed up as a global expansion. The 2026 creator playbook is bifurcating: farm reach on the ad-share giants like Spotify and YouTube, then stack owned revenue on a low-fee storefront where you actually keep what you earn. Fanvault takes 8% and lets creators keep 92% across subscriptions, tips, paywalled posts, wishlists, and authenticated memorabilia auctions, a fee more than six times smaller than Spotify's cut of ad revenue.

Use the big platforms to be found. Own the fans, and the money, somewhere else.