🇫🇮 The best podcasts for learning Finnish

Eemeli, a Finn who has spent much of his adult life abroad, speaks only Finnish across a wide range of topics at a pace pitched at the intermediate plateau — explicitly designed to fill the gap between learner audio and native podcasts. Nearly a hundred episodes and still running in 2026. No English, no transcripts on the free tier, and topics jump around rather than building on each other.

Aleksi speaks only Finnish, deliberately simplified and slowed, on everyday subjects — the comprehensible-input approach applied to a language where such material barely existed a few years ago. Around 70 episodes so far with new ones arriving steadily. No transcripts and no English support, so pair it with a dictionary habit and expect to re-listen.

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.

A private Finnish teacher who has been writing about the language for over a decade, mixing grammar explanations, easy-Finnish reading, book recommendations and a podcast with well over a hundred episodes; both blog and podcast are still active in 2026. Her specialism is easy Finnish, so the material lands well for learners stuck between beginner courses and native content. The blog is unstructured by design — it is a stream of lessons, not a syllabus.

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.

Dialogue-based lessons with transcripts, line-by-line breakdowns, word banks and a spaced-repetition trainer, organised into level pathways — the standard Innovative Language formula applied to a language with few alternatives. The free podcast feed is genuinely usable on its own. Expect relentless upselling, uneven older lessons, and very little above B1.