Instagram Rings: The newest creator award for social media recognition

Instagram has launched Rings, a groundbreaking creator awards programme that fundamentally reimagines how social media platforms recognise creative excellence. Unlike traditional creator awards that reward follower milestones with automatic accolades, Instagram Rings takes a radically different approach – celebrating just 25 creators at a time based purely on creative merit, cultural impact, and the courage to take artistic risks. This isn’t about chasing viral moments or accumulating followers – it’s about honouring those who genuinely shift culture and inspire others to create fearlessly.

How Instagram Rings works: Curated selection and unique platform features

The Instagram Rings programme emerges at a pivotal moment in creator culture, when many artists and influencers have grown weary of the relentless pursuit of engagement metrics and algorithmic favour. Instagram’s parent company Meta has explicitly positioned Rings as an award that celebrates “a spirit” rather than a specific content type – recognising creators “who aren’t afraid to take creative chances and do it their way.” The programme acknowledges something often overlooked in digital spaces: that every act of creativity requires courage, from quieting one’s inner critic to putting vulnerable work into the world, and that this bravery deserves recognition regardless of how many people see it.

What makes Instagram Rings particularly distinctive is its qualitative selection process. Rather than automatic distribution based on quantitative metrics like YouTube’s creator plaques (awarded at one million, 10 million, and 100 million subscribers), Instagram assembled a prestigious judging panel of career creatives and industry leaders to shortlist and vote on recipients. This human-centred curation ensures that Rings honours genuine creative innovation rather than simply rewarding popularity or algorithmic success. The programme also features a physical component designed by acclaimed fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner, whose commitment to creative excellence across multiple disciplines perfectly embodies the Rings philosophy. But the truly innovative aspect lies in how winners are celebrated on the platform itself: when Rings recipients post Instagram Stories, an exclusive gold ring appears around their profile picture instead of the standard Stories ring, visible across the entire app. Winners also gain the ability to customise their profile backdrop colour and personalise their “like” button, offering unique tools to express their creative identity throughout the coming year.

The star-studded judging panel behind Instagram Rings

The inaugural Instagram Rings judging panel reads like a who’s who of creative visionaries across multiple industries, lending enormous credibility to the awards programme. This diverse panel – spanning film, fashion, fine art, digital media, journalism, and technology – ensured that the selection process valued different forms of creative expression and cultural contribution. The judges’ varied perspectives meant that Rings recipients would represent a truly eclectic range of creative disciplines rather than favouring any single content category or aesthetic approach.

The judging panel included:

• Grace Wales Bonner – Fashion designer who created the physical ring itself
• Spike Lee – Legendary filmmaker
• Marc Jacobs – Fashion icon and mogul
• KAWS – Renowned artist
• Marques Brownlee – Tech YouTuber
• Eva Chen – Journalist
• Adam Mosseri – Instagram head

The first 25 Instagram Rings winners: A celebration of creative diversity

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the inaugural Instagram Rings class is that many recipients aren’t traditional “Instagrammers” in the conventional sense. Unlike YouTube’s plaques, which typically honour rising stars and career digital video makers whose primary identity is “YouTuber,” Instagram’s first Rings have gone to people who built substantial careers outside digital content creation – athletes, actors, singers, comedians, and traditional artists like photographers and illustrators, some of whom established their reputations before Instagram even existed. This deliberate choice sends a powerful message: Instagram values creators who document their craft authentically rather than those who simply optimise content for the platform. The 25 winners span follower counts from 109,000 to 7.5 million, reinforcing that Rings truly prioritises creative merit and cultural impact over audience size.

Visual artists & photographers

• Mika Ninagawa (1M followers) – Japanese photographer and film director pivotal to the 1990s “Girly Photo” movement
• Futura (397K followers) – Legendary graffiti artist, illustrator, and designer with his own brand Futura Laboratories
• Gabriel Moses (250K followers) – South London photographer known for Baroque-inspired imagery who began working with Nike at 18
• Lifeonfilm (1.5M followers) – Storytelling collective run by Grant Weintrob, Christian Baiocco, and Griffin Katz documenting strangers’ lives globally

Fashion & beauty

• Aki and Koichi (1.2M followers) – Retired Japanese couple showcasing high fashion from their Southern California home
• Mohammed and Humaid Hadban (1M followers) – UAE fashion twins featured in Forbes Middle East’s 30 Under 30
• Mimi Choi (2.1M followers) – Vancouver makeup artist creating surreal optical illusions
• Golloria (1M followers) – Beauty influencer championing inclusivity in cosmetics

Musicians & performers

• Laufey (7.5M followers) – Grammy Award-winning Icelandic singer-songwriter
• Ari Miller/ARIatHOME (2.7M followers) – Musician who livestreams impromptu street performances
• Olivia Dean (1.8M followers) – English singer-songwriter named BBC Music Introducing Artist of the Year 2023
• Ashley Gordon/DJ AG (745K followers) – England-based street performer DJ crowned Time Out’s Londoner of the Year 2024

Comedians & entertainers

• Dolly Singh (1.6M followers) – Indian actress and digital creator who started on Vine, now runs studio Dollywood Filums
• Elyse Myers (3.9M followers) – Comedian and lifestyle creator who went viral with a TikTok bad-date story in 2021
• Zarna Garg (1.6M followers) – Stand-up comedian and New York Times bestselling author

Athletes & sports

• Tyshawn Jones (738K followers) – NYC pro skateboarder and two-time Skateboarder of the Year winner
• Nigel Sylvester (626K followers) – Pro BMX rider creating first-person POV trick videos
• Chris Brickley (3.9M followers) – NBA skills coach who’s worked with Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, and Joel Embiid; also a fashion and sneaker designer

Digital creatives & content makers

• Thalita and Gabriela Zukeram (109K followers) – Brazilian sisters blending graphic design and filmmaking to produce ads for major brands
• Sebastian Jern (1.1M followers) – Swedish visual artist who’s collaborated with Bethesda and Activision Blizzard
• Cole Bennett (3.6M followers) – Music video director and Lyrical Lemonade founder
• Adrian Per (788K followers) – San Francisco-based multi-disciplinary creative helping others make better content

Food & lifestyle

• Brian Lindo/BrianCantStopEating (518K followers) – Food enthusiast highlighting restaurant cuisines and stories
• Linda Lomelino (749K followers) – Swedish food styler, photographer, and cookbook author
• Katie Krejci (615K followers) – Minnesota-based homesteading dietician encouraging followers to “opt out of the ‘modern’ way of life”

What Instagram Rings means for the future of creator recognition

The launch of Instagram Rings represents an almost philosophical turning point in how social media platforms acknowledge creative achievement, moving away from the gamification of success through follower counts and engagement metrics towards recognising genuine artistry, risk-taking, and cultural significance. By celebrating creators across such diverse disciplines – from homesteading dieticians to Grammy-winning musicians to legendary graffiti artists – Instagram is making a bold statement that creativity cannot and should not be reduced to numbers. The programme’s emphasis on “creative courage” and “shifting culture rather than simply participating in it” speaks to a growing awareness that meaningful creative work often happens away from viral trends and algorithmic optimisation, in the quiet spaces where artists take risks and push boundaries.

For creators navigating Instagram in 2025 and beyond, Rings offers something potentially more valuable than algorithmic favour or brand deals: recognition from industry legends and creative peers that their work genuinely matters. While Instagram hasn’t specified how frequently new Rings will be awarded, the inaugural cohort has established a compelling precedent that prioritises creative integrity over commercial success. Whether Rings will inspire more platforms to adopt similarly qualitative recognition systems remains to be seen, but for now, it stands as a refreshing counterpoint to the metrics-obsessed culture that has dominated social media for the past decade. The gold ring around a creator’s profile picture isn’t just a status symbol – it’s a reminder that in an age of endless content, the courage to create something meaningful still deserves celebration.