Messi, Ronaldo or Kardashian? The Most Liked Photos in Instagram History
Instagram has always been considered an app dominated by influencers, but the history of the most liked photos shows a surprising result: no model or influencer has enough staying power to top the charts.
Instagram, the photo-based social network acquired by Facebook back in 2011 for about a billion dollars, has always been considered an app dominated by influencers — beautiful women who share photos that bring them a flood of likes and dollars. But the history of the most liked photos on Instagram shows a surprising result: no model or influencer gets enough likes to survive in the mirror of history.
As of July 30, 2026, out of the 10 most liked photos in the history of Instagram (note: we are talking about photo posts, excluding Reels), only one features a woman — Taylor Swift, in her engagement announcement post to football player Travis Kelce. The post, which went up 11 months ago, has received about 37.5 million likes so far, placing it in sixth place on the list.
Who dominates the list indisputably is Lionel Messi, who uploaded 5 of the 10 most liked photos and appears in 6 of them. In first place is his photo lifting the World Cup in 2022; in third place is a photo of him with the cup in bed; in fifth place is a photo of him with the cup on the plane from Qatar; and in ninth place is a photo of him with the cup in Argentina. Another photo of him, visiting the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona last November, is in sixth place. Messi also appears in the photo in fourth place — the advertisement for Louis Vuitton, in which he is playing chess against Cristiano Ronaldo.
Besides the fourth place, Ronaldo appears one more time in the top ten — in the Saudi team Al-Nassr's announcement when they bought him in 2022.
| Rank | Description | Date | Likes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Messi celebrating the 2022 World Cup win | 18/12/2022 | 74.6M |
| 2 | Photo of an egg | 04/01/2019 | 60.4M |
| 3 | Messi with the cup in bed | 20/12/2022 | 53.4M |
| 4 | Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi in the chess ad | 19/11/2022 | 41M |
| 5 | Messi with the cup on the plane | 19/12/2022 | 40.9M |
| 6 | Messi visiting Camp Nou | 10/11/2025 | 37.9M |
| 7 | Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's engagement | 26/08/2025 | 37.4M |
| 8 | XXXtentacion's last post | 19/05/2018 | 34.1M |
| 9 | Messi with the cup in Argentina | 22/12/2022 | 33.3M |
| 10 | Al-Nassr announces the addition of Ronaldo | 30/12/2022 | 32.8M |
The second place is probably the most interesting story in the top ten: it is a simple photo of an egg, uploaded in January 2019 to a new account opened by user Chris Godfrey with one goal: to break the like record of Kylie Jenner. The egg succeeded, overtook Jenner with 25 million likes within a few days, and today it stands at over 60 million.
And the eighth place is also an interesting story: the last post of American singer XXXtentacion. The fairly generic post went up three days before his brutal murder, and many used it as a platform to express condolences.
