The best brands on Instagram in 2026 (so far)

We’re back with another installment of the Social Futures Report—a series where we compile and analyze social media posts and campaigns inspiring us, and break down what makes them so genius. We don’t just examine the flawless creative execution of every post or campaign, but the brand impact, too.

This time, we’re narrowing that focus to just one network: Instagram. From electric World Cup activations to a NASA post inspiring whimsy, 2026 has been a standout year for brands producing highly visual content that leans into culture.

You’ll be familiar with a lot of the names on the list. Others are newer faces we couldn’t ignore. Here’s our lineup of the best brands on Instagram in 2026, and the parts your team can use in your content.

The best 2026 World Cup campaigns on Instagram

The 2026 World Cup was the biggest sporting event of the year by a distance. But for a lot of brands, it was the biggest social moment too, even those who weren’t active sponsors, though we’ll start with some that were directly involved.

Nike and Adidas spotlight world-class athletes

It’s fitting for a sporting rivalry that the two greatest players of their generation work with different brands. Cristiano Ronaldo is with Nike, while Lionel Messi is an Adidas man, and both brands leaned heavily on their stars for their World Cup campaigns.

Ronaldo is one of the top-performing accounts on Instagram, and Nike took full advantage of that, even running a campaign that also included Lebron James.

Adidas also fully used Messi’s profile on the network, co-posting his signature boots in advance of ‘el ultimo tango’ of the final. This racked up huge levels of engagement, with more than 15 million interactions on that post alone.

From the beginning of May to the end of July, Adidas Football (the main account the brand used for these promotions) drove almost $100M in estimated earned media value (EMV) on Instagram, according to Sprout Social Influencer Marketing data.

Adidas also used Messi in its advertising, which it uploaded to social media. Its #YouGotThis ads that also featured Bad Bunny were a success on the network in a way that ads often are not, garnering millions of engagements and an active audience through its references to a culturally relevant moment and star power.

This is a lesson in what it means to be plugged into culture. Instead of just repeating a TV spot with no context, the campaign also lives on social, and is a timely reference to a broader cultural moment, featuring two bona fide stars of their respective fields.

The play: If you’re going to borrow star power, make sure you’re making full use of it. Use their accounts as leverage for part of the campaign by cross-posting alongside your content. And sure, it helps if it can be Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, but this works at a fundamental level for any influencer or creator you work with.

Levi’s stadium stunt

Not every brand can lean on being an official partner at a huge event. And that created some interesting workarounds, the most prominent of which came from Levi’s. Strict stadium sponsorship rules meant that the brand’s logo at the Bay Area arena had to be covered. Rather than write this off as a lost opportunity, Levi’s leaned into the bit and posted a Reel welcoming people to the “beautiful [redacted] stadium”, paired with a well-placed bit of trending audio.

This worked because of the iconic branding and name recognition Levi’s has built over decades. It became the denim company’s biggest Instagram post of the year with 2.5 million engagements, outperforming even its BTS look at its ad for the Big Game. It also had business impact, with the brand following up by selling a limited-edition shirt featuring the redacted logo.

The play: Let restrictions inspire creativity. People want to feel like they’re in on the joke, so playing along with a nod and a wink and inviting people to laugh with you builds community.

British Airways and Norwegian bet on success

British Airways and Norwegian took a footballing rivalry to the skies. The two brands are strongly associated with their respective countries, and when England and Norway were scheduled to meet each other in the quarter-finals, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Norwegian publicly called out British Airways for a friendly bet: whichever country lost, their national airline would have to change their logo to the other’s for a day.

This was a huge win for both brands. British Airways saw a significant spike in their Instagram engagement compared with their baseline levels of performance.

Norwegian’s top post, meanwhile, was the brand actually changing its logo and acknowledging the loss for a day, which drove more than a million likes and $1.1 million in EMV. A win-win, despite the final score in the game itself.

Spoiler alert for those unfamiliar; despite the Norwegian encouragement, it did not, in fact, come home.

The play: Look for partnership opportunities on social. There will come a time during cultural moments that these kinds of opportunities will bubble up. Make sure you’re paying attention for when that does happen.

WSDOT informs and entertains, often in the same post

Not every account is trying to sell something. Sometimes the goal is to inform the public with a safety announcement or a PSA. And the best way to do that on Instagram is often through humor.

The Washington State Department of Transportation’s account on the network manages to thread that needle. One example included an announcement of a truck full of corn turning over and spilling corn all over the road. The account joked it was one way to make street corn, while also playfully accusing the Iowa DOT and Nebraska DOT of nefarious involvement.

The humor works because there’s a real message underneath, and people want to feel connected to the institutions that serve them. But the most successful messages from the account actually go beyond humor and highlight how they serve the community at large.

The SR 20 North Cascades highway was closed for repairs, but one couple had on their wedding registry that a perfect gift would be for it to reopen in time for their wedding.

The WSDOT got wind of this and accelerated the timeline for its reopening to four days before the wedding, all being well. This drove more than 150k engagements for the institution, as people celebrated the extra effort and praised the department for engaging with the celebration.

But the biggest post of the year celebrated an achievement of the department’s own. July 2026 marked the 10,000th successful animal crossing across the Snoqualmie Pass that allows animals to go over I-90 and reduces the risk of traffic collisions. That Reel got almost half a million engagements, and the comments were full of praise for it, with many saying this is exactly the kind of project they want their tax dollars to go towards.

The play: Information doesn’t have to be boring. If you can use humor as a low-stakes narrative hook, that’s a great way to get people to stop scrolling. But always think about how you can tie your message to a larger emotional narrative, as that’s what truly gets people to engage.

Grillo’s Pickles goes absurdist

Amid a sea of jumping on trends, Grillo’s Pickles has created a world of its own, with its pickles as the main character. We know from research that brands having a mascot helps with recognition in advertising. And the brand has taken that to an absurdist degree by making an actual pickle its primary character, taking it out for adventures around the world.

This has included everything from showing a pickle the Statue of Liberty (8M+ engagements) to one being involved in a speed race.

This works because of the juxtapositions in a lot of the situations. There’s a jarring mix of high effort and seemingly low budget, with a simple pickle consistently the star of the show. So far this year, the brand has more than 14 million engagements on its content, as well as $40M+ in EMV.

The play: Don’t be afraid to get weird. People are looking for something different to the normal beyond traditional trend surfing. If you can create a world of your brand’s own, a lot of your audience will join you there.

NASA inspires wonder and whimsy

NASA is one of the biggest brands on Instagram even when it doesn’t actively have a moon mission ongoing. The Artemis II project helped push the space agency to new heights in 2026 through a mix of wonder and whimsy, leading to more than 130 million engagements this year so far.

The top performing posts all came in April around the launch and return of the astronauts, and were responsible for more than a third of the total engagement for the year.

In a funny way, this is a heightened version of the employee-generated content we have seen rising in popularity across brands this year. But NASA also managed to create a cultural moment of its own during the moon mission, with people tuning in across networks to see the latest updates. Viral moments like the floating jar of Nutella interspersed with photography and astronaut logs humanized the magnificence, and led to heightened levels of engagement and interest from the public.

The play: Not everyone is able to launch a rocket into space, that’s obvious. But every brand will have moments that are unique to them that they can build a narrative around, with visual moments that nobody else could replicate. Lean into those, and build that mix of wonder and whimsy for your audience.

McDonald’s wins with cultural relevance

You can get a good sense of what’s culturally significant right now simply by looking at the McDonald’s Instagram account.

Most of their top posts feature a reference to popular culture in some way, whether that’s a Happy Meal collab with a new movie or World Cup stars hanging out at the restaurant. McDonald’s is a leader when it comes to cross-promotions with major media moments, and its Instagram is a reflection of that.

One of the more interesting posts was the Backrooms video that it did, which was less of a collaboration and more of a nod and a wink at the brand’s place in the lore the movie taps into. The brand created its own liminal spaces filled with branded items as the protagonist explores the set.

Having a view into internet culture beyond the brand itself emboldens teams to make decisions early that predict where the market is going, rather than reacting to it. It’s part of a social intelligence framework that gives first-mover advantage in a trend everyone is now trying to jump on. That advantage led to more than half a million engagements across platforms for the McDonald’s Backrooms posts, and one of its top performing Instagram posts of the year.

The play: It’s crucial to be aware of the cultural zeitgeist and of your brand’s place within it, whether that’s launching an official collaboration with a new product or just finding your fit within the online conversation. This is more refined than jumping on trends, and requires a thoughtful approach to how you can add to the conversation, rather than adding to the noise.

The best brands on Instagram prioritize cultural fluency over hard selling

With the exception of some Happy Meal promotion and a pair of Messi’s boots, none of these brands spent any of their time talking about what they sell. A corn spill became a bit about street corn, McDonald’s tapped into its role in the Backrooms lore, and Norwegian and British Airways focused on their countries’ soccer teams rather than their planes. The common thread here is leaning into cultural relevance, which is what drives success on Instagram. That means knowing the network, your audience and your brand well enough that it doesn’t feel intrusive when you join the conversation.

The most successful brands on Instagram create their own moments within a larger moment in a way that feels natural. That can be by partnering with influencers, carving out your own niche within a larger conversation, or through creating a world of your brand’s own through a content series or other similar content where your brand can naturally shine.

Learn how influencers and employee-generated content can help you tap into cultural moments on networks like Instagram in Sprout’s 2026 Influencer Marketing Report.