Our newsletterVendor reportMetricool, 2026
Instagram carousel views rose 31–40% across account sizes in 2026, but engagement fell 19–37%
Organic reach & algorithm
| Metric (change 2026 vs 2025) | Tiny (%) | Small (%) | Medium (%) | Big (%) | Huge (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reach | -21% | -13% | -4% | -7% | -6% |
| Views | 31% | 34% | 40% | 31% | 35% |
| Likes | -22% | -10% | 0.2% | -2% | -10% |
| Comments | 5% | 11% | 33% | 58% | 23% |
| Shares | 36% | 116% | 88% | 69% | 132% |
| Saved | -28% | 5% | 7% | 2% | 2% |
| Engagement | -37% | -27% | -21% | -19% | -30% |
Carousel format metric changes 2026 vs 2025 by account size
Carousel format metric changes 2026 vs 2025 by account size- Reader Note:
- Views rose and engagement rate fell at every account size. The same split runs through the whole study: views grew faster than interactions did, so rates fell even where volumes rose.
- Evidence:
- Observed behaviour
- Vendor interest:
- Moderate — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
- Sample:
- 24,364,803 Instagram posts from 375,118 accounts worldwide, covering January and February 2025 and January and February 2026 — a two-month window, not a full year. Accounts with zero publications were excluded, as were posts with zero impressions or zero interactions, so every average in the study is computed over posts that got at least one interaction. Accounts were segmented by follower size into Huge (1M+), Big (100K-1M), Medium (10K-100K), Small (2K-10K) and Tiny (0-2K). Outliers were not removed. Growth has a non-obvious definition: an account counts as having grown only if it crossed into a higher follower tier, so an account that went from 3K to 9K followers is not counted as having grown, and the study's own methodology notes that crossing Tiny to Small takes far fewer new followers than crossing Medium to Big — growth rates are therefore not comparable across tiers.
Reader Note:
Evidence:
Vendor interest:
Sample:Good for
Comparing yourself against a similar segment, and choosing what to test next.
Not for
- Saying that one thing caused another, or predicting what you would get.
- This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
- This is an aggregated or average number that covers very different cases. Real results in a particular segment may differ.
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