Podcasts are an immersive, fun, and incredibly effective way to supercharge your language learning progress. As a learner of Arabic, you can always benefit from combining different types of media to study and practice with — that definitely includes Arabic podcasts!
Today, let’s take a quick look at a few of the very best Arabic podcasts for learners available online.
This selection includes some of my personal favorites that I have used for my own practice, as well as widely-known and beloved programs enjoyed across the Arab world by native speakers and students alike.
Why Arabic podcasts are so useful
Arabic is a rich and diverse language. Not only does the standardized, formal variant exhibit countless complexities you may not recognize from your mother tongue, but there are also unique vernacular dialects to contend with, some of which can seem like entirely distinct languages of their own to the uninitiated!
On top of that, online resources for learning spoken Arabic, especially the dialects, remain scarce. This is where Arabic podcasts come in.
Depending on their style and theme, Arabic podcasts may use Fusha or any of the dialects native to the place or region where the program is produced. This can be a real immersion booster as it makes podcasts one of the best ways to easily expose yourself to different forms of Arabic spoken by natives.
Because podcast dialogue is often deliberately delivered in a manner that is easy to understand and often includes written transcripts, even Arabic podcasts not made with students in mind can nonetheless serve as perfect Arabic learning tools!
Best Arabic podcasts for beginners
1. Simple & Easy Arabic
Concentrating on the so-called Levantine Arabic dialects, especially Jordanian and Syrian, Simple & Easy Arabic offers a very comprehensive set of materials, including but not limited strictly to podcasts, all tailored to the needs of the English-speaking beginner.
The amount of content available here is mighty impressive. It consists not only of plenty of spoken Arabic podcasts (which always include plenty of English explanations interspersed to make sure you don’t need to pause and rewind to understand what is going on), but also videos and audio clips on topics like grammar, pronunciation, and more.
For those with a paying subscription, Simple & Easy Arabic also produces plenty of supplementary exercises to help you practice what you’ve listened to.
All in all, this makes Simple & Easy Arabic one of the best resources for entry-level students interested in Levantine dialects of Arabic!
What I like about Simple & Easy Arabic:
- Very comprehensive, with a clear focus on Levantine-spoken Arabic
- Lots of different kinds of complementary content that go well with the (excellently produced) podcasts
- The mix of English and Arabic-language instructions in the podcasts are helpful for beginners
Pricing: Subscriptions start at about $5 per month.
2. Language Transfer
The Language Transfer series of podcasts is a very unique one. Instead of relatable, realistic Arabic audio stories, Language Transfer tries to teach you how to speak Arabic — the spoken Egyptian dialect, to be exact — with no prior exposure to the language by using a very avant-garde methodology.
Each episode is structured as a conversation between the host and a fellow student. Neither of these two are native speakers themselves, but that is beside the point — Language Transfer is not the kind of podcast to listen to for pure immersion. Rather, the conversations comprise a journey into the underbelly of the language, examining how its different pieces fit together.
That might sound overly technical and heady, too complex to use as a beginners’ resource. If that was your first impression as well, I only implore you to give Language Transfer a shot. You might be surprised at how much you can learn!
What I like about Language Transfer:
- One-of-a-kind approach to language learning that’s as fascinating as it is effective
- Easy-to-follow, yet dense podcast lessons
- Heavily focused on Egyptian, though some lessons feature elements of MSA and other dialects
Pricing: It’s free!
3. ArabicPod101
ArabicPod101 is one of the most comprehensive collections of Arabic-language podcasts, audio, video, and text-based lessons tailored for foreign learners.
Crucially, they include not just content helpful for studying MSA, but also two of the most widely understood dialects – Moroccan and Egyptian.
Many of ArabicPod101’s videos and podcasts are available entirely for free, though much of the rest, including more advanced course content, is limited to paying subscribers.
For bare beginners however, there is more than enough free content out there to get you started with Modern Standard Arabic or a vernacular dialect of your choice, immersing yourself in the spoken language from day one!
What I like about ArabicPod101:
- Egyptian, Moroccan, and MSA-based podcasts and exercises
- Loads of content, much of it free of charge
- High production values and helpful audio, transcripts, and videos
Price: Paid content starts at $4 per month.
4. Pimsleur Arabic
While not strictly an Arabic podcast, Pimsleur offers a highly effective, time-tested way to become conversational in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Its core curriculum is built around three levels, consisting of 30-minute audio lessons—90 lessons and approximately 48 hours of instruction in total.
The Pimsleur Method teaches you to understand and speak through guided, active participation, focusing on core vocabulary and proper pronunciation. The bite-sized daily lessons use a scientific, spaced-repetition approach to get you confidently forming complex sentences in MSA without getting bogged down in grammar jargon.
What I like about Pimsleur:
- Gets you speaking from day one
- Ensures you learn authentic pronunciation from the start
- Uses spaced repetition for superior memory retention
Price: Subscriptions start from $14.95/month (Audio-Only) up to $20.95/month for full access to all content. Try it now for free.
5. Arabic With Sam
This is an easy Arabic podcast for beginners specifically targeted to the religious Muslim crowd. If you’re an English speaker who is on a mission to brush up on their Arabic for a better understanding of the Quran, Sam has got your back.
In a mix of English and Classical Arabic, each episode of Arabic With Sam tries to get you acquainted with a certain grammatical or linguistic concept of the language. Often, this is then complemented with a retelling of one of the Quranic stories where that concept is prominent – giving you a piece of language knowledge and some religious-literary trivia all in one!
What I like about Arabic With Sam:
- One of the most thorough and longest-running Quranic Arabic podcasts for English-speaking learners
- Elegantly strikes the balance between religious study and language learning
- Easy and forgiving for beginners, yet deep enough to be worthwhile
Pricing: It’s free!
6. Transit Station by Yalla Arabee
This Arabic podcast is a perfect crossover point between beginner-level fare and more challenging programs — you might even call it a transit station of sorts!
Presented mostly in Arabic, each episode deals with the life and work of a famous Arabic-language artist, usually a writer or poet from the Levant region.
With the help of their captivating stories, you not only learn a lot about the Arabic language and how it’s changed over the years, especially in the context of the 19th and 20th centuries in the Levantine countries, but you also learn some truly essential bits about Middle Eastern and Arab history in the modern world!
What I like about Transit Station:
- An excellent intermediate podcast for Arabic students wanting to move beyond ‘beginners-only’ programs without getting too technical
- Valuable cultural lessons and fascinating historical stories in each episode
- High production value and useful material for any MSA or Levantine Arabic learner
Pricing: It’s free!
7. The Arabic We Speak
This is one of the most exceptional free Arabic podcasts I know.
What makes The Arabic We Speak stand out so much is that it is produced by a pair of native speakers on their own, as opposed to a large organization or a private business. Dedicated to the Jordanian dialect, The Arabic We Speak offers a charming and surprisingly rich look at the way the language sounds, flows, and behaves through the eyes (and mouths) of natives.
Each podcast episode is structured in the form of a story surrounding a topic relating to everyday life, told entirely in Jordanian. At the lower, beginner-friendly levels of the course, slow, simple, and clearly enunciated language is used to make it easier to follow.
The more advanced episodes are delivered in a more sophisticated style that is closer in delivery to contemporary radio programs.
What I like about The Arabic We Speak:
- One of the highest-quality free podcasts for the Jordanian dialect
- Content available for all experience levels
- Story-based episodes are engaging and highly immersive
Pricing: It’s free!
8. Salis – Learn Egyptian Arabic
For sheer wealth of (free!) content, there’s little that can beat Salis, at least for those wanting to study the Egyptian dialect.
In over 50 episodes and counting, the host Sondos guides you through many of the fascinating, insightful, and quirky aspects of the Egyptian language. Topics range from grammar and pronunciation to stories of everyday life in the country.
What I like about Salis – Learn Egyptian Arabic:
- Very deep dive into the unique aspects of Egyptian Arabic
- Pleasant presentation
- Far more episodes available than most comparable podcasts
Pricing: It’s free!
9. Arabicpod
Designed explicitly with learners in mind, Arabicpod (not to be confused with Arabicpod101 above) is one of the best Arabic podcasts to listen to as a beginner to up your immersion and exposure to the spoken language.
Though Arabicpod offers podcasts and audio-based lessons for many different experiences and difficulty levels of Modern Standard Arabic, it is their beginner-grade content that particularly shines compared to the competition.
All of Arabicpod’s podcasts are entirely free to listen to. However, a paid membership goes a long way, unlocking extras like written exercises and a PDF transcript for each track.It’s worth mentioning though that the library hasn’t been updated in years.
What I like about Arabicpod:
- Large, well-made collection of podcasts tailored to beginning students of MSA
- Transcripts and exercises available
- Easy-to-follow, realistic dialogue that is easy to transfer to real-life situations
Pricing: Subscriptions start at $6.25 monthly.
Best Arabic podcasts for intermediate learners
10. Learn Levantine Arabic With Livi
This is a relatively new free podcast targeting Levantine learners. It’s pretty beginner-friendly but assumes a certain existing level of listening comprehension and grammar knowledge, which is why I put it in the ‘intermediate’ category for the purposes of this guide.
The host, Livi, guides you through a new topic in each story-like episode. These can range from conversations about the Arabic language to more abstract and creative topics – my favorite so far is episode nine, ‘The Concept or Idea of Home’!
Because Livi is an advanced, non-native speaker, she is joined by a native co-host from a Levantine Arabic-speaking country for each of these episodes. This way, you get a large amount of exposure to the different accents and unique features of the languages of the different places within the region.
What I like about Learn Levantine Arabic With Livi:
- Broad, yet useful overview of the differences and commonalities between the Levantine dialects
- Engaging and interesting stories that change themes with every episode
- Helpful, mixed-language narration and clear presentation geared towards learners
Pricing: It’s free!
11. Real Arabic
This is another Levantine Arabic podcast specifically produced with intermediate to advanced students in mind.
Mostly targeting Lebanese and Syrian-spoken Arabic, it strikes a fair balance between imparting a more advanced language level than what you’d come across in more beginner-oriented podcasts and incorporating realistic, colloquial dialogue.
If you listen closely, you’ll notice Real Arabic featuring important idioms, useful slang, and other language elements you would be likely to come across in a day-to-day environment anywhere in the Levant.
What I like about Real Arabic:
- True-to-life use of daily language whilst maintaining a high, challenging level of speech
- Covers a lot of interesting topics from politics, culture, and social and personal contexts
- Loads of useful resources including written transcripts for Levantine (Syrian and Lebanese) learners
12. Bilmasri
This Arabic podcast is unfortunately no longer frequently updated, but its existing episodes offer a wealth of useful material for learners of both the Egyptian dialect that the program heavily focuses on as well as MSA and some other dialects to some extent.
Bilmasri, with its bilingual presentation and learner-friendly documentation, includes some content that is really difficult to find elsewhere.
This includes, for example, a prominent series of episodes that analyzes the many detailed differences between different accents and regional dialects of Egypt, featuring native speakers from all over the country.
Frequently, Bilmasri also takes a look at some of the things that notoriously make Egyptian Arabic so distinctly different from its siblings in other Arab countries.
What I like about Bilmasri:
- Provides an in-depth look at the many faces of Egyptian Arabic and other neighboring dialects
- Presented bilingually, with an even mix of direct linguistic instruction and immersion
Pricing: It’s free!
13. El Bulbul
This Arabic podcast is a treat for those of you trying to improve your Jordanian. In each episode of El Bulbul, you will encounter a complex conversation, usually revolving around cultural, social, or historical topics concerning the Levant.
While fairly advanced, the hosts do their part in breaking these complex interactions down into more easily manageable chunks that help you greatly expand your vocabulary and grammar.
Some of the episodes also deal with the issue of language in a more direct manner, explaining certain linguistic concepts as they relate to Jordanian Arabic the way it’s spoken within the country.
What I like about El Bulbul:
- Challenging, yet learner-appropriate style of presentation
- Lots of real-world topics and authentic use of Jordanian dialect
- Professional level of production and lots of variety
Pricing: It’s free!
Best Arabic podcasts for advanced learners
14. SBS Arabic
For many language students, there are few greater milestones to be prouder of than being able to follow news broadcasts in your target language. If you are moving up to a higher level of Arabic and want to put that to the test, SBS Arabic is a great starting point.
The channel is part of the Special Broadcasting Service of Australia, targeting bilingual minorities within the country. Hence, you can expect truly professional standards of production coupled with very clear MSA dialogue in addition to the occasional English line here and there.
This slight, but oftentimes helpful bilingual nature of the programs makes SBS Arabic more approachable than some alternatives.
What I like about SBS Arabic:
- Professional news content that is excellent for building up MSA vocabulary and expanding your subject range
- Produced semi-bilingually, helping the transition from intermediate to advanced Arabic podcasts
- Written summaries available for most audio content
15. Al Kown
This podcast is excellent if you are studying a Gulf Arabic dialect and happen to want to expand your astronomy and science-related vocabulary. For everyone else, it should serve as a fun challenge and an invitation to expand their existing Arabic boundaries!
At the time of this writing, Al Kown stands tall at 76 episodes, making it one of the most significant programs of its kind in Gulf Arabic (Kuwaiti, to be exact).
What I like about Al Kown:
- Represents a valuable, yet underserved niche among freely available Arabic podcasts
- Lots of episodes make it a great resource for Gulf Arabic students
- A fun challenge for any advanced student of MSA or other dialects
16. BBC Xtra
The BBC has been a gold standard for English-language journalism for decades, but what’s less often acknowledged is the worldwide reach of their multilingual programs.
On the BBC Xtra channel, you will find nestled among others a wide selection of Arabic programming, including videos, newsreels, articles, and podcasts.
As is to be expected, almost everything here will be presented in a fairly high-level MSA. However, the sheer variety of programs means there will be plenty of cases where you’ll get to hear various dialects, too.
What I like about BBC Xtra:
- One of the richest collections of Modern Standard Arabic media covering all sorts of topics from news to culture to science and beyond
- Free podcasts, videos, and live broadcasts
- Some exposure to vernacular dialects as well depending on the program
17. Sowt
Produced almost entirely in Jordanian with some MSA for good measure, the Sowt channel hosts a number of podcasts all relating to Middle Eastern culture and society.
Some of Sowt’s programs have become mildly controversial for their attempts to break social taboos — for example, by discussing the topic of sexual violence and homophobia in the Arab world.
If you are looking for something that will really push your Levantine vocabulary to the next level while also engaging with some heavy, important topics that will teach you a lot about life in the region, then I highly recommend giving Sowt a try!
What I like about Sowt:
- Socially conscious and fascinating podcasts about all areas of modern life in the Levant
- Some of the best production values among Jordanian-language podcasts today
- Thematically and linguistically interesting not just for learners of the dialect it is presented in
18. Al Jazeera Podcasts
Al Jazeera needs no introduction. Among all major Arabic broadcasters, it is the one that has managed to leave the biggest footprint in international media thanks to its well-funded and aggressively promoted English-language content.
Its mainline Arabic-language channel broadcasts worldwide just the same and offers slickly produced news content largely in impeccable MSA. Because Al Jazeera is based in Qatar, you can also expect some Gulf dialects to shine through in a few podcasts here or there.
What I like about Al Jazeera Podcasts:
- One of the best places to follow regional and global news in formal Arabic
- Nearly unlimited content, all for free
- Also serves as good practice for advanced Gulf Arabic
19. Ar-Podcast
This is a major website cataloging dozens of Arabic podcasts aimed at native speakers. The site mostly broadcasts in MSA, and you can expect rapid dialogue that tries to strike a balance between formal and overly colloquial speech.
If purely for the sheer number of podcasts available here, Ar-Podcast is one of the highest-quality resources for advanced-level students of MSA.
What I like about Ar-Podcast:
- Loads of programs to choose from
- One of the best non-news outlets for native MSA content
- Covers almost every imaginable field and topic
20. Podeo
This is one of the newest and fastest-growing major podcast platforms in the Arab world today. Podeo’s shows tend to exhibit particularly high-quality production and prominently feature name-worthy experts as presenters.
Because these are not newscasts and are intended for a general audience with a relatively casual vibe, you can expect most of them to be in the regional dialect of the country of origin.
For example, I highly recommend checking out The Mother Being, an Egyptian podcast all about women’s health and the many misconceptions about family planning and female reproductive health not just in Egypt, but in many countries within the region.
What I like about Podeo:
- Significant selection of topical, well-produced podcasts, many in dialect
- One of the fastest-growing platforms of its kind, worth following
- Large variety in terms of language, style, and topics
21. Fanajeen
This is a perfect kind of podcast if you don’t have a lot of time to devote to a podcast every day, but still want to practice your Arabic skills at a higher level than with pure exercise.
Fanajeen is a literary podcast that gives you a short and sweet analysis of an Arabic book, usually a celebrated classic and often including foreign titles, within 20 minutes or less each episode.
The trick here is that you can follow along on your phone while listening thanks to a fully integrated mobile Fanajeen app. With full transcripts and written texts relevant to each episode, you can practice not just your listening but also your reading comprehension at the same time!
Full membership, which gets you goodies like the ability to read and listen to Fanajeen offline, does come with a small monthly fee. But considering that the main features are entirely free of charge and that Fanajeen is really one-of-a-kind among Arabic podcasts, it’s fair enough of a tradeoff.
What I like about Fanajeen:
- Unique concept of literary analysis with both written and audio components
- Easy-to-use, fully unified app
- Short episodes for time-strapped learners don’t compromise on the quality of content
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this list of the best Arabic podcasts for language students! If you know some really good programs out there that I have neglected to mention, don’t hesitate to share them with us in the comments below!
Also don’t forget that no podcast, no matter how fascinating or well-made, will ever single-handedly replace the value of a well-considered learning regimen. Combine multiple kinds of media and Arabic language resources, such as language learning apps and courses, for a holistic experience that ensures you’ll have a well-rounded grasp of the language instead of an overly narrow one!
That’s it for today! Until next time, and good luck with your Arabic studies!