NPR & National Public Media's year in review: 2025

NPR engages with over 46 million people each week across its platforms, earning its position as the leading brand in both trust and audience loyalty. Listeners rely on NPR content daily for an invaluable public service, contributing to continued audience growth. 2025 featured crucial news coverage, new award-winning programming, impactful campaigns and exciting sponsorship updates. Check out a few highlights from NPR and its sponsorship team National Public Media below.

NPR: Essential. Relevant. Here to stay.

It was a challenging year for NPR and public media, but what better way to showcase the critical impact of high-quality, trustworthy content from NPR than a new award-winning sizzle reel. Recognized by both the Viddy Awards and the MarCom Awards for creativity and design, the video highlights NPR’s unparalleled trust with its audience. With 83% of listeners considering NPR programming personally important to them, sponsoring NPR provides essential support for a valued public service. Brands gain enhanced value and trust as 78% of NPR listeners have a more positive opinion of companies that sponsor NPR and support NPR’s mission to inform the public now and for generations to come.

Sources: NPR State of Sponsorship Survey, September 2025; Gallup: Trust in Media at New Low of 28% in U.S.; The Harris Poll, Public Radio Sentiment Survey 2025; NPR Impact Study 2025. 

NPR Music & Tiny Desk keep getting bigger

For nearly 18 years, NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts have brought intimate music performances to the public, showcasing artists across genres and generations. Just this year, artists like Bad Bunny, Sierra Hull, Ed Sheeran, Gloria Estefan and Clipse performed behind the iconic desk at NPR HQ. And Tiny Desk’s impact on the music industry at large was demonstrated this year by making history with two artists’ performances at the Desk nominated for 2026 Grammy Awards: Leon Thomas for Best R&B Performance and Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso for Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album.

The annual Tiny Desk Contest also returned to search for the next great undiscovered artist. Bay Area rapper and 2025 Contest winner Ruby Ibarra embarked on the ten-stop Tiny Desk Contest On The Road tour in June and July. To further engage with fans, NPR ran an enter-to-win Tiny Desk Sweepstakes, offering one lucky winner the chance to see a Tiny Desk live at NPR Headquarters in Washington, D.C. With Tiny Desk and NPR Music continuing to shine as a one-of-a-kind platform in the music industry, 2026 will be another exciting year with new opportunities to align your brand.

New broadcast shows expand NPR’s reach

Speaking of the Tiny Desk, fans can now hear their favorite concerts on the radio every week. This Spring, NPR Music launched a new hour-long radio show, featuring a combination of Concert performance audio and behind-the-scenes commentary from Tiny Desk Series Producer Bobby Carter and Alt.Latino host Anamaria Sayre. Tiny Desk Radio can now be found on over 150+ member stations across the country.

In addition to Tiny Desk Radio, NPR expanded its culture and entertainment broadcast portfolio in 2025 with a new pairing of It’s Been a Minute with Brittany Luse and Wild Card with Rachel Martin. On Wild Card, Martin uses a custom deck of cards to drive conversations with celebrity guests about their fears, joys and how they’ve built meaning from experience. Paired with Brittany Luse’s It’s Been a Minute, the new broadcast hour presents meaningful explorations into how culture shapes our world and our lives.

NPR’s broadcast portfolio of news, culture and entertainment, and music programming reaches 21.2M people each week.

New podcasts, new platforms and the most popular episodes of the year

As a leader in the podcast industry, NPR continues to hold two of the top three podcasts in the U.S.: NPR News Now and Up First, which earned a nomination in the Golden Globes’ first-ever category dedicated to podcasts. NPR also added news-centric podcast Sources & Methods to its portfolio in 2025, bringing listeners inside the Pentagon, State Department and the intelligence community to help make sense of America’s shifting role in the world, and how events in faraway places matter here at home.

Audiences turn to NPR for the news, but they stay for interviews, human interest stories and culture reporting you won’t hear anywhere else. This year, NPR’s celebrity interview podcast with a twist, Wild Card, launched a video version of the podcast. Listeners can watch interviews with their favorite celebrities like Matthew McConaughey, Brené Brown and Shonda Rhimes, and your brand can align via on-camera host-read sponsorship by Rachel Martin.

Need your next good listen? Here are a few of the episodes NPR audiences couldn’t stop streaming this year:

• Planet Money: The secret world behind those scammy text messages
• Life Kit: How to crave movement more than screen time
• TED Radio Hour: Learning from what others leave behind
• Pop Culture Happy Hour: Best Pixar Movies, Ranked
• Short Wave: The Yellowstone Wolf Controversy
• Throughline: Health Insurance in America

The first year of Tech Unheard, the custom podcast from Arm and NPM Creative

Tech Unheard, the award-winning custom podcast series from Arm and NPM Creative, brings listeners behind the boardroom door with technology’s most inspiring visionaries. Hosted by Arm CEO Rene Haas, the show features one-on-one conversations with industry leaders and policy makers, exploring topics ranging from the potential of Artificial Intelligence to their personal journeys to leadership. In 2025, guests like Alex Wang of Scale AI, musician and activist Peter Gabriel, Mark Chen of OpenAI and more joined Haas to analyze pressing industry developments and share entertaining anecdotes of success and failure. Learn more about the custom podcast here.

Bringing brand stories to life: Standout case studies

Our in-house creative brand studio, NPM Creative, produces custom audio and visuals that deeply resonate and engage NPR listeners by highlighting the real experiences and impact behind a brand’s mission. This year’s campaigns include crafting a custom Soundscape with Vital Farms to share a family farmer’s commitment to ethical practices, developing a heartfelt story for Dignity Memorial on personalized remembrance and bringing Cunard’s luxury onboard experiences to life through immersive audio. Discover how NPM Creative uses compelling storytelling to meet unique brand goals here.

Interested in what NPR sponsorship can do for your brand in 2026?

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