AbstractFoods contaminated by pathogens are responsible for foodborne diseases which have socioeconomic impacts. Many approaches have been extensively investigated to obtain specific and sensitive methods to detect pathogens in food, but they are often not easy to perform and require trained personnel. This work aims to propose a textile organic electrochemical transistor-based (OECT) biosensor to detectL. monocytogenesin food samples. The analyses were performed with culture-based methods,ListeriaPrecis™ method, PCR, and our textile OECT biosensor which used poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT):polystyrene sulfonate (PSS) (PEDOT:PSS) for doping the organic channel. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to obtain topographic maps of the gold gate. The electrochemical activity on gate electrodes was measured and related to the concentration of DNA extracted from samples and hybridized to the specific capture probe immobilized onto the gold surface of the gate. This assay reached a limit of detection of 1.05 ng/μL, corresponding to 0.56 pM ofL. monocytogenesATCC 7644, and allowed the specific and rapid detection ofL. monocytogenesin the analyzed samples.Keypoints•Textile organic electrochemical transistors functionalized with a specific DNA probe•AFM topographic and surface potential maps of a functionalized gold gate surface•Comparison between the Listeria monocytogenes Precis™ method and an OECT biosensorSupplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00253-023-12543-y.