🇵🇭 The best podcasts for learning Filipino

The most complete set of graded audio lessons for Tagalog, each with a transcript, breakdown and vocabulary list, and the strongest option for building listening comprehension from scratch. The free account and the YouTube channel between them cover a lot of beginner material. As with its sibling sites, navigation is cluttered, the subscription upselling is relentless, and advanced content is sparse — most learners outgrow it around B1.

Edison Miguel's comprehensible-input podcast is the standout free listening resource for Tagalog: over 300 episodes of real conversation on Filipino topics, graded so that early episodes are slow and heavily scaffolded and later ones approach normal speed. It is entirely free to listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube, and it was still publishing weekly in August 2026. There are no transcripts on the free tier, and the site doubles as a funnel to the host's paid tutoring.

Kris Andres works through Tagalog grammar topic by topic with spoken exercises you can do in the car, which makes it one of the few audio resources that actually teaches structure rather than just phrases. All 55 episodes are free. The series ended in late 2022, so nothing new is coming, and audio-only grammar drilling suits some learners much better than others.

A free blog that explains the hard parts of Tagalog properly — verb focus and affixes, the ang/ng distinction, ligatures, aspect — at more length and with better examples than most video lessons manage. It is a useful second opinion when one explanation has not clicked. The accompanying podcast stopped after ten episodes in 2020 and new articles are infrequent, so treat the site as a reference archive.

Oliver Villaverde's long-running podcast focuses on getting learners speaking with native Filipinos rather than on grammar theory, and it passed 150 episodes while still publishing in 2026. The episodes are free; one-to-one voice calls with his tutors are the paid add-on. Delivery is chatty and unstructured, so it complements a systematic course rather than replacing one.

SBS produces professional Filipino-language news, interviews and features for Australia's Filipino community, published free as daily audio with accompanying articles. It is proper broadcast journalism in Filipino — the natural step up once learner podcasts stop stretching you. Speech is at full native speed with the Taglish code-switching real Filipino media uses, and much of the content is Australia-focused.

Mihalis Eleftheriou records real lessons with a real student and walks you through constructing the language yourself using cognates and logic — Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek, Turkish, Arabic and Swahili are covered. Completely free, no ads, no sign-up, funded by donations. The Spanish course in particular is one of the most recommended free resources anywhere; the trade-off is small vocabulary and no reading or writing practice.

Mark Pentleton teaches a genuine student while you listen in, across French, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Swedish, Portuguese, Japanese and Gaelic. The podcast seasons are free on any podcast app and are structured as a real curriculum rather than scattered episodes; the Academy sells premium lesson notes, video and bonus audio. Ideal commuting material for beginners through B1, and the Spanish and French series are the strongest.