How to Prepare Your Entry for the Scottish Podcast Awards
Before we go any further, a declaration: I have no relationship with the Scottish Podcast Awards, its founder Corrinne Gardiner, its judges, or Go Radio, the official media partner. I haven't been asked to write this, I'm not affiliated with the awards in any capacity, and I have no inside knowledge of what the judging criteria will look like.
What I do have is over 20 years of podcast production experience, a studio in Glasgow that has helped hundreds of shows get made, and a genuine belief that the Scottish Podcast Awards are good for the Scottish podcasting community.
That's why I'm writing this.
If you want the official entry details, go to scottishpodcastawards.scot.
What I can offer here is a producer's perspective on how to put together the strongest possible entry, based on what I'd be looking for if I were sitting on the other side of the table.
Why the Scottish Podcast Awards Matter
Scotland has a podcasting scene that punches well above its weight. Shows produced here have built international audiences, covered stories that mainstream media missed, and created communities around subjects that previously had no natural home. For years, there's been nowhere to formally recognise that.
The Scottish Podcast Awards change that. A dedicated, national awards programme for Scottish podcasting means visibility for shows that deserve wider audiences, credibility for creators who've invested seriously in their work, and a signal to Scottish businesses, funders, and commissioners that podcasting here is a professional, grown-up medium worth paying attention to.
I wrote previously about why entering podcast awards is worth your time, even if you don't win. The short version: being a finalist or a winner is a marketing asset, a credibility signal, and a forcing function that makes you look at your show honestly and ask whether it's as good as it could be. The Scottish Podcast Awards give Scottish creators recognition specific to this country, this scene, and this audience.
The entry window closes on 9 March 2026. The ceremony is at the Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow on 25 June. Don't miss it by not entering.
What We Know About the Awards
The confirmed facts, drawn from public announcements, are these.
There are 23 categories spanning entertainment and pop culture, business-to-business, news and politics, comedy, Gaelic, sport, and more. There's an Emerging Talent category and a Listeners’ Choice award. Both audio-first podcasts and video podcasts are eligible. There's an international category for shows produced outside Scotland. Entries are open to independent creators and community-led shows as well as major production teams.
What has not been published, at least at the time of writing, is any specific judging criteria. No scoring framework, no guidance on what judges will prioritise, no indication of how entries will be evaluated. That's not unusual for an inaugural awards programme, but it does mean that everything I say below about what judges might look for is informed speculation from a producer's perspective, not inside information. Take it in that spirit.
What I'd Be Looking For If I Were Judging
Based on 20 years of producing podcasts and listening to thousands of hours of them, here's my honest assessment of what tends to separate the shows that deserve recognition from the ones that are simply consistent.
A clear reason to exist
The strongest shows can answer the question "why does this podcast exist?" in a single sentence, and the answer isn't "because we wanted to make a podcast." It's something specific: to cover Scottish football in a way that treats fans as intelligent adults, to give a voice to independent Scottish businesses, to explore Scottish history through the people who lived it. Shows with a clear reason to exist make better editorial decisions, attract more committed audiences, and are easier to evaluate as a judge because you understand immediately what they're trying to do and whether they're doing it.
Consistency over fireworks
One brilliant episode doesn't make a brilliant podcast. Judges will almost certainly listen to more than one episode, and what they're assessing across those episodes is whether the quality holds. A show that is reliably good, week in week out, with a consistent format, consistent audio quality, and consistent editorial standards, is more impressive than one that occasionally produces something exceptional between average outings. Consistency is hard and it's undervalued. It's also what builds audiences over time, which is ultimately what the awards are recognising.
Audio quality that doesn't get in the way
I'm a producer, so I'm going to say this: poor audio quality is distracting. It takes cognitive effort to process audio that's echoey, compressed, inconsistent between guests, or undermined by background noise. Judges listening to entries will form impressions quickly, and those impressions are partly physical. A show that sounds right lets the content land cleanly. A show that sounds wrong makes the listener work harder than they should. You don't need a professional studio to produce good audio, but you do need to have taken the question seriously. If your recording environment is a hard-floored room with no acoustic treatment, a dynamic microphone and some soft furnishing will take you a long way.
Hosting that serves the content
Great podcast hosting is largely invisible. It creates space for guests to say interesting things, asks the follow-up question the audience wants asked, and doesn't make the episode about the host's opinions unless that's what the show is for. Bad hosting talks too much, asks compound questions that guests can't answer, or lets conversations drift without editorial purpose. Whatever category you're entering, the hosting standard will be part of what judges are assessing, even if it's not explicitly stated as a criterion.
Genuine connection with a Scottish audience or subject
This is the Scottish Podcast Awards. Shows that have a meaningful connection to Scotland, its people, its stories, its communities, or its culture are presumably what the awards are designed to celebrate. That connection should be visible in the content, not just declared in the entry form. A business podcast recorded in Scotland is different from one that covers Scottish business stories, features Scottish founders, and speaks directly to the Scottish business community. The latter has a stronger case.
How to Structure Your Entry
Again, I don't know what the entry form looks like. But having seen podcast award entries from both sides, here's what tends to make the difference.
Choose your category carefully. The 23 categories give you real options. A show that could technically enter Business to Business might be better served by Emerging Talent if it's in its first year and the quality reflects that. Be honest about where your show is genuinely competitive rather than where it's most flattering to enter.
Pick your strongest episodes. If you're asked to submit sample episodes, don't submit the ones you enjoyed making most. Submit the ones that best demonstrate what your show can do: the interview where everything clicked, the episode where the production was tightest, the one you'd play to someone who'd never heard the show to convince them to subscribe.
Write about your audience, not just your content. The most compelling entries I've seen for any podcast award talk about who the show is for and what it does for them, not just what topics it covers. Judges are assessing whether a show has genuine value for its audience. Show that you know who your audience is and that they're responding to what you're making.
Be specific rather than effusive. "Our show has grown significantly" is less useful than "we went from 400 to 2,200 monthly listeners between January and December 2025." Specificity signals that you're taking the entry seriously and that you have a real relationship with your show's performance data.
Don't undersell the production effort. If you've invested in decent equipment, an acoustically treated recording space, or professional production support, mention it. It's relevant context. It tells judges that the quality they're hearing isn't accidental.
On Audio and Video Quality for Your Entry
Since this is the Podcast Studio Glasgow and I do have a professional interest here, I'll be transparent: if your show's audio quality is holding your entry back, we can help with that. Recording at the Podcast Studio Glasgow from £75 per hour gives you broadcast-quality audio and, if you want it, cinema-grade video production. That might be relevant if you're preparing a strong entry for the video podcast category in particular, or if you've been meaning to upgrade your production quality, and an awards entry is the push you needed.
But plenty of excellent entries will come from shows recorded in treated home studios, sensibly equipped spare rooms, and community spaces with decent microphones. The awards are about the quality of the work, not the cost of the setup.
The Broader Point
Scottish podcasting is good. It's getting better. The Scottish Podcast Awards are a chance for the community to publicly recognise that, celebrate the shows doing it right, and make the case to a wider audience that Scotland is producing podcast content worth paying attention to.
The more shows that enter, the stronger the awards become and the more meaningful the recognition is for everyone who ends up on the shortlist. If your show is doing something worth celebrating, enter it. If you're not sure your show is ready, entering is still a useful exercise because it forces you to look at your work honestly. And if you want a conversation about how to get your production quality to the point where you're confident enough to submit, get in touch.
Entry closes 9 March 2026. The ceremony is on 25 June at the Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow. Details at scottishpodcastawards.scot.
