While the RSS 2.0 tag may be populated with any text, Apple has a specific list of requirements for the tag. Currently Apple Podcasts supports 19 categories, with a smaller subset of them supporting a specific list of subcategories. You may designate more than one subcategory where appropriate. These categorizations are used to determine the hierarchy within the Apple Podcasts directory, so it’s important to pay attention to what is allowed. Apple allows multiple top-level category definitions for the same podcast, but will default to the first one listed when cataloging the Podcast in the Apple Podcasts directory.
Within your RSS 2.0 feed, an Apple Podcasts category with two subcategories looks like this:
<itunes:category text="Technology">
<itunes:category text="Computers" />
<itunes:category text="News" />
</itunes:category>
Category names are case sensitive. If your yoga podcast is in the Health & Fitness category, be sure both the ‘H’ and ‘F’ are capitalized. When a category name includes an ampersand, it needs to be encoded in your feed like this: &
For the most current list of Apple Podcasts categories, see the Apple Podcasts for Creators page.
