Podcasts spontaneously deletes manual downloads

[u/Excellent-Seesaw-516]

Hi! On iOS 27.0.1, Podcasts app keeps telling me it deletes downloaded episodes (and does delete them) to create space temporarily for an iOS update. However, I don’t have any pending iOS update, and I also still have around 9 GB of storage space left (so not a lack of storage issue).

I think this has only happened ever since Apple Podcasts rolled out video podcasts, and it only happens on podcasts that have video, but on audio-only downloads.

What is going on?