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Instagram in early 2016 has one undisputed queen, and she just dethroned her best friend.
Selena Gomez spent the first months of 2016 doing something nobody else on Instagram could claim: overtaking Taylor Swift for the title of most-followed person on the platform. By March, Gomez had crossed 69 million followers and kept climbing past 70 million, closing out a leaderboard shakeup that had been building since Swift’s long run at the top through late 2015. The video “10 Most Popular Celebrity Instagram Accounts” breaks down exactly who’s still fighting for space near the summit.
- Selena Gomez surpassed Taylor Swift in early 2016, hitting 69 million followers in March and climbing past 70 million to become the single most-followed person on Instagram.
- Kendall Jenner holds the record for the most-liked Instagram photo of 2015, a shot of her hair arranged into heart shapes, while sister Kylie Jenner draws massive engagement on her own beauty and lifestyle posts.
- Justin Bieber leads the men on the platform in likes despite recurring controversy over paparazzi run-ins and fan boundaries, while Cristiano Ronaldo stands as the highest-followed male athlete and one of the only men cracking the very top tier.
Gomez Passes Swift At The Top
Taylor Swift had effectively owned the most-followed spot through the back half of 2015, but Gomez’s steady climb caught up and passed her in the opening months of 2016. Once Gomez cleared 69 million followers in March, she kept adding numbers fast enough to blow past 70 million, putting real distance between herself and the rest of the pack. Swift remains a top-tier presence on the platform, but the changeover at number one marked one of the biggest storylines in the space this year.
Kim Kardashian, Ariana Grande, and Beyoncé round out the group of women still competing at the very top of the follower count, each running accounts built around a different pitch — Kardashian’s daily-life-and-business hustle, Grande’s music and candid moments, Beyoncé’s carefully timed career drops. None of them have displaced Gomez, but all three remain fixtures anytime the leaderboard gets discussed.
The Kardashian-Jenner Footprint
No single family shows up on this list more than the Kardashian-Jenners. Kendall Jenner’s record-setting post from 2015 — her hair styled into heart shapes — became the most-liked photo of that entire year, a benchmark that still gets cited anytime someone measures single-post engagement. Kylie Jenner, meanwhile, has turned her account into a running showcase of beauty and lifestyle content that pulls in enormous numbers post after post, distinct from her sister’s viral one-off.
Kendall Jenner’s heart-shaped-hair photo stands as the single most-liked Instagram post of 2015 — the kind of benchmark other celebrities are still chasing.
Kim Kardashian’s own account continues to operate on a different model entirely, blending family snapshots with the sort of image-building that reads more like brand management than diary-keeping — the same instinct that’s fueled headlines like Kim Kardashian Confirms What We All Suspected About North.
The Men Fighting For Space At The Top
Instagram’s upper tier is overwhelmingly female, which makes the men who do crack it stand out. Justin Bieber leads that group, generating millions of likes on nearly every post even as controversies around paparazzi confrontations, fan boundaries, and throwback shots of past relationships keep his name in the headlines for reasons that have nothing to do with music. Cristiano Ronaldo is the other major male presence, and he’s the highest-followed athlete on the platform, period — his posts mixing training footage, family moments, and career milestones in a way that keeps him competitive with the pop stars dominating the rest of the leaderboard.
Instagram As The New Press Release
What the video really captures is how far Instagram has drifted from its original pitch as a photo-filtering app. For A-list talent in 2016, it’s become the primary PR channel — no press office, no scheduled interview, just a direct post that reaches tens of millions of people instantly. Selfies, brand partnerships, luxury fashion, career news: it all runs through the same feed now, and the follower counts are the closest thing the industry has to a real-time scoreboard.
That scoreboard is still moving fast. Gomez’s jump past 70 million came within weeks of dethroning Swift, and with Kardashian, Grande, and Beyoncé all posting at a pace built to chip away at that gap, the next shakeup at the top of the leaderboard is probably closer than anyone expects.
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