Taylor Swift's engagement to Travis Kelce makes the list, but the VIP of the social media channel is Lionel Messi
Cheng Xin/Getty
Instagram has given the world a lot in its 15-year history. Hashtags are part of the national conversation because of the Meta $META-owned company. Ellen DeGeneres took a selfie that was reposted around the world at the Oscars. And would the Kardashians have been such a force in our world if it weren't for their thousands of selfies over the years?
While those posts might have turned heads, none of them are amongst the ten most liked Instagram posts of all time. Neither, for that matter, are Victoria Beckham's Spice Girls reunion shot or Beyonce's pregnancy announcement.
Instead, soccer is the prevailing them of the top posts, with just the right mix of internet strangeness and, naturally, Taylor Swift.
In honor of the social media app's launch 15 years ago, on Oct. 6, 2010, here are the 10 most liked Instagram posts of all time.
Lionel Messi's celebration post from the 2022 World Cup tops the list with 74.7 million likes. Messi excitedly grasps the trophy in the primary image, with several others showing him celebrating with teammates.
There's not a lot to see here. It's literally a boring picture of an egg. But users came together to give it 60.6 million likes when its creator, Chris Godfrey, asked for their help in topping the 2019 champion Kylie Jenner.
Get used to seeing Messi on this list. This image of him lying in bed with the World Cup trophy might have fallen short of his original post, but it still earned him 53.7 million likes.
You might not know this song, from the 2013 film "Ramaiya Vastavaiya," but the soulful track that captures the feeling of falling in love hooked Instagram users earlier this year, especially with the young singers recreating it. It earned them 51.9 million likes.
Officially posted as an ad, of sorts, for the Insta360 GO 3S camera, this video, which films a toddler walking (and, later, stumbling), could be one of the cutest things on Instagram — and 47.1 million users agree.
Hey, guess who's in this Annie Leibovitz picture (shot for Louis Vuitton)? Yep! Lionel Messi and his on-field rival Ronaldo contemplate a game of chess atop a Vuitton bag, which was enough for 41.6 soccer fans to double-tap to show their love for the still frame.
Yep, him again. And he's still showing off the World Cup. This time the two of them are sitting on a plane — and that elicited 41.2 million likes. Look, people were real excited about this victory in 2022, ok?
One sentence – "Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married" – was all it took to break the internet in August. The engagement announcement from the world's most famous couple quickly amassed 37.7 million likes.
Emil's the piano player in this video, but despite his keyboard skills, it's probably not him that picked up the 37.2 million likes. Credit belongs to the toddler who first requested he play "My Heart Will Go On," then broke into a very cute, very talented version of the song.
The soccer great gets his flowers in this sans-Messi shot, which shows him jumping into a freezing pool of water in a very cold Lapland, Finland. Some 35.7 million people liked the video, though his skimpy bathing suit might have had a little to do with that.
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