Substack is going more global, and as a European I can't be happier about it
For years this platform felt built for the US. That's finally starting to change, and I've watched up close what it's cost the writers who came before this shift.
Two years ago, when I started writing here, I faced a real dilemma. It wasn’t about what to write, but which language to choose.
Back home in Hungary, I already had a successful business, a community of a few thousand on Instagram, and years of hard work to back it up. So when I discovered Substack, the choice felt like a no-brainer: build it in Hungarian, too, and just keep the momentum going.
Shouting into the void
For a while, I actually tried to run two publications at once: one in Hungarian, one in English. I even moved my Hungarian podcast over here, genuinely excited to give it a new home. But it didn’t take long to realize what was actually happening. The Hungarian side was basically shouting into the void. Substack just isn’t part of the culture over here yet. Aside from a handful of political commentators using it for private circles, insider content, or video hangouts, it’s just not a thing here.
Meanwhile, my English Substack was starting to take off, and new readers were finding me (mostly from the US). So I decided to put all my energy there. It wasn’t an easy call, because it felt like letting go of a whole other side of my work, but it was definitely the right move.
The invisible roadblock
I think about that choice a lot now because Substack has completely changed the game for anyone facing the same dilemma today.
They recently rolled out a massive translation feature. It started with Notes, but now you can translate full articles with one click. You can write in English and people can read it in fifteen different languages, or write in your own language and have it land perfectly in English. Plus, they just launched local leaderboards.
Substack was built in the US, so it was only natural that it felt tailored to that audience for years. But this shift feels like a beautiful, natural evolution. They’re finally expanding their horizons.
This matters to me so much more than just my own story, because I’ve watched this exact language barrier hold back so many brilliant creators. Through my mentoring work, I’ve worked with writers from France, Denmark, Italy, Germany, and almost every single time, our sessions would start the same way. They were completely stuck. The audience back home who didn’t speak fluent English wasn’t on the platform yet, and the global, English-speaking audience had no way of discovering them. Nobody is going to manually copy, paste, and translate a long article just to see what a foreign creator is talking about.
It was a massive roadblock. Unless you were willing to double your workload, rewrite your entire brand in English, and leave your local identity behind, you were basically invisible to the rest of the world. Most people looked at that mountain and quietly decided it just wasn’t worth the hustle. For a long time, it felt like you had to choose: either stay local and isolated, or abandon your roots to go global.
The new hybrid reality
But I don’t think that binary choice has to exist anymore. This new update doesn’t mean creators don’t need an international mindset—it means the technical barrier to entry has just vanished. We’re about to see a whole wave of European writers show up on Substack who never would have taken the leap otherwise, built on a completely hybrid model.
First, there’s the financial side. Substack launched its sponsor program, bringing in more brands and new ways for writers to get paid beyond just regular subscriptions.
At the same time, the platform is filling up with non-English creators and readers who were pretty much outside this ecosystem until now. It was only a matter of time before these two worlds collided. Before this, a brand looking to reach a French, Italian, or Spanish audience couldn’t really do it here. Now, there’s a real, measurable audience for them to tap into. It won’t happen overnight, but I’d be shocked if sponsors and brand deals don’t start following these new European leaderboards very soon.
The other shift is much more personal for me. A couple of years ago, when a non-English writer came to me for mentoring, half of our time was wasted on figuring out the tech and translation hurdles. Now, that whole conversation changes. I can finally tell someone: just write in your own language, sound like yourself, and let the platform handle the rest. It’s going to completely change how I guide people, and I think it will change who even knocks on my door in the first place. We’re going to see more Europeans writing as themselves, not some translated version of who they are.
I moved my entire business into English because I genuinely believed the biggest opportunities were happening outside my own country. I still believe that, but back then, it was an all-or-nothing trade. Today, you don’t have to fully abandon your home base to get a seat at the global table. You can build both simultaneously.
For those of us writing from Europe, this isn’t just a minor feature update. It’s the door swinging wide open to a completely new way of building a digital brand.
Warmly,
Andi
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As someone that’s just joined, I completely agree with this! Great to see more European voices on here 👏🏼
Portuguese (Brazil) is the second language on Substack also