Lionel Messi has taken the top spot with Instagram’s most-liked post following his World Cup triumph, but what else is up there? Here’s the current top 10.
Plenty of posts have gone viral across social media in the last few years, with each platform having its own records for most-liked, most-watched, and most commented-on posts.
In the case of Instagram, it may not seem like posts can spread fast and start achieving record amounts of interactions in a short time in the same way Twitter does, but some of the biggest posts have gotten tens of millions of likes in a short space of time.
Previously, the top spot was held by a photo of an egg. In case you’ve forgotten what that was all about, it was a campaign from an account called world_record_egg that wanted to take the spot as the most-liked photo from Kylie Jenner.
Following the conclusion of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, where Argentina finally triumphed for the first time since 1986, Lionel Messi’s celebratory post has taken that spot away from the egg.
The footballing icon, who was backed by pretty much the world – well, aside from France – to win the World Cup, received over 43 million likes on his photo in less than 24 hours.
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He’s also toppled long-time rival Cristiano Ronaldo, who previously held second and third place with separate posts. One of which included Messi and himself playing Chess in an advertisement for Louis Vuitton ahead of the World Cup.
With over 42M likes, Lionel Messi’s World Cup victory post is now the most-liked Instagram post by a sportsperson in history 🐐 pic.twitter.com/czi95a878c
— B/R Football (@brfootball) December 19, 2022
Top 10 most-liked Instagram posts
Messi’s post has now flown past the egg photo with over 60 million likes, and it would be surprising to see the once-viral meme try and make a comeback to reclaim top spot. Though, it has ticked up a little bit since losing out to the footballing icon.
The complete top 10 can be found below:
| Post | Likes | |
| 1 | 2022 World Cup win – Lionel Messi | 60.8 million |
| 2 | The Egg – World_Record_Egg | 56.6 million |
| 3 | Ronaldo vs Messi Chess game – Cristiano Ronaldo | 42 million |
| 4 | World Cup trophy on flight back to Argentina – Lionel Messi | 35.9 million |
| 5 | Twins pregnancy announcement – Cristiano Ronaldo & Georgina Rodríguez | 32.6 million |
| 6 | Ronaldo vs Messi Chess game – Lionel Messi | 32.5 million |
| 7 | 2022 World Cup elimination – Cristiano Ronaldo | 31.3 million |
| 8 | XXXTenacion final post – XXXTenacion | 30.4 million |
| 9 | Photo after reaching 2022 World Cup final – Lionel Messi | 28.8 million |
| 10 | Ariana Grande wedding photo – Ariana Grande | 26.3 million |
With new posts going live all the time, there are plenty of attempts to try and break into the top 10, but going for the top spot is going to be pretty difficult following Messi’s rise to number one.
We’ll keep this post updated with any new entries, so keep checking back for more.