On 30 April 2026, Instagram tightened its rules on reposted content. Accounts that mainly post other people's photos or carousels without meaningfully changing them are no longer recommended to people who do not follow them. Their followers still see their posts. What they lose is reach to people who do not follow them yet, which for most accounts is where growth comes from.
Instagram described the change on its creators blog as extending protections it had applied to Reels since 2024. It also said that 75 percent of recommendations in the United States now come from original posts.
What counts as original
Instagram counts as original a photo or video you took, something you designed, or content you have materially edited. A material edit has to add real value beyond presenting the other person's content again. Meme templates and popular clips can qualify if what you add meaningfully changes them.
Some changes explicitly do not count: adding a border, a watermark or subtitles, or giving credit in the caption. Press coverage of the change added that speeding up a video, or posting a screenshot that shows the original account's name, does not count either.
How an account gets back in
Recovery is automatic and rolling. An account becomes eligible for recommendations again once most of what it has posted over the previous 30 days is original. There is no form to fill in; the Account Status page in settings shows whether an account's content can be recommended.
A number circulates online that ten reposts in thirty days triggers the penalty. That threshold comes from Instagram's 2024 rule for Reels, which removed accounts that reposted without material changes ten or more times in thirty days. The 2026 rule for photos and carousels is framed differently: it looks at whether most of an account's recent posts are original.
What Instagram suggests instead of reposting
- Collabs, where the creator and the brand co-author one post that appears on both profiles.
- The paid partnership label, for sponsored posts the brand had a role in creating.
- Remix, which adds your own contribution alongside the original.
- Sharing the post to your Story, or using the repost button, which Instagram launched in August 2025. It credits the original poster, and reposts may be shown to the reposter's followers.
Social Media Today's explainer of the change reported that some publishers with licensing agreements, or explicit permission from creators, are not affected. That is a specific exemption for identified publishers, not a general rule that permission makes a repost original.
What it means for brand accounts
Many brands in the Gulf run their Instagram on a mix of their own content and reposted content from customers, creators and partners, often with permission and a credit in the caption. Under the 2026 rules, permission and credit do not make a repost original. If most of a brand's recent posts are reposts, the account risks disappearing from recommendations.
- Count the mix. Look at the last 30 days of each client account and see what share of posts are original.
- Turn reposts into Collabs where you can, so the creator co-authors the post.
- Use paid partnership posts for sponsored creator content, with the label.
- Move pure sharing to Stories and the repost button, and keep the grid mostly original.
- Edit meaningfully when you do reuse creator content: new footage, new framing, a real contribution, not a border and a logo.
- Keep written permission for any creator content the brand uses, since the responsibility for permission stays with the account that posts.
Why Instagram is doing this
Instagram's reason is fairness to creators: when the same content appears on several accounts, it wants the original to be the one that is recommended. Since 2024, when identical content exists, only the original is recommended, and copies can carry a label linking back to the original creator. The 2026 change extends that thinking from Reels to the photos and carousels that brand accounts rely on most.
The free Instagram engagement rate calculator on this site shows how an account's recent posts perform against accounts of a similar size, which is a useful check before and after changing the balance of original and shared content.
