Search Spotify for the show before you change anything
Open the Spotify app or the web player and search your exact show title. If it comes up, you're in the index already and what you have is a placement problem, so skip down to what Spotify says moves you up. If nothing comes up, it's a distribution problem instead, and the next two sections are your afternoon.
Published for the first time today? Wait a few hours before touching anything. Spotify's line on this is that new shows can take a little time to appear in search results but usually appear after a few hours. There's no queue to watch and nothing you can do to speed it up.
If you host with Spotify for Creators, there's nothing to submit. Spotify publishes those shows to listeners automatically, so a show that's missing usually means no episode has published yet, or that the few hours Spotify asks for haven't passed, rather than search failing you. Everyone else is claiming or submitting a feed, and that's the rest of this page.
Claim the show at creators.spotify.com
Check your host first, because that's where Spotify sends you. It keeps a submission guide for Acast, Buzzsprout, Captivate, Libsyn, Megaphone, Podbean, RedCircle, Simplecast, Spreaker, Transistor and a long list of others, all linked from Getting your show on Spotify. If your host is on that list, its own submit button is the shortest route you have.
The direct route is a claim, and its entry point is buried. Ignore any guide pointing you at podcasters.spotify.com/submit, because that address now lands on a page that doesn't exist. Go to creators.spotify.com and log in with any Spotify account, or make one free. On a new account, select Find an existing show, then Somewhere else. On an account that already manages a show, hit your avatar or the three lines in the top-right corner, then Add a new show, then those same two options. On mobile you tap the arrow at the bottom of the screen to see it. Then paste your RSS feed URL or your Spotify show URL.
Art19, Ausha, Cast Plus and Zencast have no self-serve route at all. Spotify's instruction for those four is to ask your hosting provider how to distribute to Spotify, so don't lose an afternoon hunting for a form that isn't there.
A show can only be claimed once. If a former producer, an agency or an ex-co-host already claimed it, the flow is closed to you, and Spotify's answer is to get the existing admin or owner to invite you from their own account. That's a conversation rather than a form, and it's worth starting today, because you can't change anything inside Spotify until you're on the account.
Get the 8-digit code out of the email in your feed
The code goes to the address in your RSS feed, not the address on your Spotify account. The field is itunes:email, the sender is noreply@hello.creators.spotify.com, and you copy the 8-digit code straight into the claim form. Before you sit waiting on it, paste your feed URL into a browser tab and read which address is actually in there.
Some hosts mask that address or swap in a generic one, and Spotify's fix is to ask the host to expose yours long enough to claim the show. If the address belongs to someone else, that person has to read you the code, so send that message now rather than after you've filled the form in.
Company and custom domains are where this dies. Spotify documents that its verification mail sometimes doesn't reach custom or company domains, and the fix it gives is a Gmail or Outlook address in the feed instead. Check spam first, then change it at the host. Spotify then needs a couple of hours to read the new address, and if it still hasn't worked after four hours, that's when you contact Spotify.
Hosted with Spotify for Creators, the same field lives in Settings. Go to Settings, then Availability, then Add email to RSS feed, and allow up to 10 minutes for outside platforms to see it. Know before you click it that the address is public in the feed, so use one you don't mind publishing.
Fix the feed elements Spotify actually requires
A missing elements error won't tell you which element is missing. Spotify's instruction is to contact your hosting platform about the missing details, and the three it names are cover art, title and description. Check those first, since a host dashboard fixes all three in about two minutes.
The required list is short, and your host fills most of it. Spotify's delivery spec wants one show per feed, since two podcasts in one RSS isn't supported, plus a title, a link, a description and an itunes:author on the show, and at least one episode, because a podcast needs at least one episode to be public. Every episode needs a guid that stays stable over time, a pubDate in RFC 2822 format, a title, and its audio attached as either an enclosure or a media:content carrying a URL and a file type.
Artwork has to be a true square and audio has to be streamable. The spec asks for 1:1 images at the highest resolution you have, as TIFF, PNG or JPEG, and audio as MP3 at 128kbps or better, or MP4 with AAC-LC, up to 12 hours an episode. Replacing an image or an audio file at the same filename ships nothing, because Spotify only re-downloads when the name or path in the feed changes. Upload the new file under a new name.
Set the first category and the country list
The first category in your feed is the only one that decides chart eligibility. Spotify uses the first category listed in your RSS to decide which chart your show can appear on, so the order of that list is a decision and not a formality. It has to be an Apple Podcasts category, and it nests, so Arts can carry Design underneath it.
You change categories at your host, not in Spotify, unless you're hosted with Spotify for Creators, where it sits in Settings. Spotify reads categories out of the feed, so the change at the host is the change. Don't expect it to move where you show up browsing the app either, because Spotify's editors curate those categories separately and chart categories are a different set.
Then set a country list, because leaving it out costs you. The spotify:countryOfOrigin element takes a space-separated list of country codes ranked most relevant first, and Spotify's spec says a narrow list has a higher potential to reach its target audience than a wide one, while omitting the element entirely marks the show global with no target market at all. It's a Spotify-specific field, so ask your host whether they'll add it.
Keep the show title short enough to survive a phone screen. The spec says consumer-facing fields other than descriptions shouldn't run past 20 characters, because anything longer gets truncated to whatever the device can display. A title padded out with keywords loses its tail on the smaller screens.
What Spotify says moves you up, and where to watch it
Play count. That's the whole published answer. Spotify's article on shows missing from search says results are often impacted by a show's play count, so newer shows may sit lower down while they're building an audience. Spotify publishes no keyword field, no ranking report and no resubmission route that changes your position, and anyone selling you Spotify search optimization is selling you a guess.
The charts run on the same fuel and update daily. Top Podcasts is the top 200 in each country by weekly unique audience, Trending Podcasts is the top 200 gaining popularity on a combination of growth factors, and select countries also carry a top 50 by category. Spotify says the charts are based on listening behavior and engagement, which is why asking listeners to follow the show is worth more than another pass at your metadata. Find them by tapping Search on mobile or Browse on desktop, then Podcasts and Podcast Charts, or at podcastcharts.byspotify.com.
Measure it under Analytics, then Discovery. The panel headed Where on Spotify your content was discovered splits into Home, Library and Search, with Impressions, Conversion rate, Plays and Average completion rate against each. Read the Search row carefully, because Spotify bundles search queries, the charts and its own editorial picks into that one number, so it isn't a pure search count. For a single episode, open Episodes, select it, then Analytics and Discovery.
Don't buy plays to force any of this. Eligibility for the Verified by Spotify badge explicitly includes safeguards against fraudulent or bot-driven listenership, so bought numbers point straight at a check the platform already runs. High impressions with low plays is Spotify's own description of people seeing you and not clicking, and that's artwork and title work, not a search problem.
If it's still missing tomorrow
Give every change an hour before you judge it. Spotify checks a subscribed feed several times per hour, and its spec asks for at least an hour for a change at the source to reach the apps. A fix at noon that isn't visible at 12:05 is not a failed fix, and resubmitting on top of it just gives you two things to untangle.
Then check the feed yourself, in a browser. Open the feed URL: it should load without a login, it should carry at least one episode, and that episode's audio file should play when you open its address directly. A feed that 404s or a show with no published episode is invisible to Spotify no matter how many times you send it.
Then use the contact form, which every creator help article carries. The link reads Can't find what you're looking for? and it opens Spotify's creator contact form. Bring the feed URL, the show name and the exact error text, because Spotify's published troubleshooting stops about where yours does.
None of this makes a small show outrank a big one. Claiming the show, fixing the feed and ordering the categories get you into the index and onto the right chart, and after that Spotify's own answer is audience. That part happens off Spotify, in the places people search before they ever open a listening app.