World Cup 2026 Instagram Gains: Haaland Ends Tournament With Highest Follower Growth

Across all 1,200+ players, the tournament as a whole has added 294,730,623 new followers, and the top of the table looks different to how it did even a few days ago.

According to MyBettingSites.co.uk, Erling Haaland (Norway) finishes the tournament as the single biggest gainer in raw numbers, adding 31,832,161 new followers (+78.3%), now on 72,476,644 followers. Vozinha (Cape Verde) is a close second with 29,458,989 new followers (+93,407.9%), now on 29,490,527, having led the raw gains table for most of the tournament before Haaland’s stretch through the Semi-Finals and Final overtook him. Jude Bellingham (England) is third with 11,846,060 new followers (+28.7%), now on 53,108,938. Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) is fourth with 11,694,282 new followers (+1.8%), now on 677,341,157, still the highest total of any player at the tournament. Lamine Yamal (Spain) completes the top five with 9,556,724 new followers (+22.1%), now on 52,831,797.

Percentage growth across the full tournament is headed by Vozinha’s extraordinary rise (93,000% increase), a number nobody else came close to touching. Douglas Santos (Brazil) sits second with +1,276.7%, taking him to 2,653,703 followers, followed by Sidny Lopes Cabral (Cape Verde) with +1,154.1%, up to 1,600,166 followers, Eloy Room (Curaçao) with +1,144.3%, up to 1,149,002 followers, Mostafa Ziko (Egypt) with +1,063.2%, up to 1,707,082 followers, and Diney Borges (Cape Verde) with +1,060.1%, up to 241,725 followers, respectively. 

The nation’s table for the full tournament ended up tighter than expected. Norway finished at the top with +34,255,716 new followers, powered almost entirely by Haaland’s run. Cape Verde are second with +32,745,882, still built on Vozinha’s numbers, with Argentina third on +32,241,597, Brazil fourth on +29,774,105, Mexico fifth on +24,561,069, and Spain sixth on +20,673,389.

Instagram Follower Gains Across World Cup semi-finals/final: 16 July to 20 July

Zooming in on the final stretch of the World Cup, the 1,200+ players tracked gained 30,635,228 new followers between after the Semi-Finals and the Final alone.

Lamine Yamal (Spain) leads this stage with 3,959,686 new followers (+8.1%), now on 52,831,797, reflecting Spain’s run to the very end of the tournament. Jude Bellingham (England) is second with 3,756,930 new followers (+7.6%), now on 53,108,938. Erling Haaland (Norway) is third with 2,886,662 new followers (+4.1%), now on 72,476,644. Lionel Messi (Argentina) is fourth with 1,368,771 new followers (+0.3%), now on 514,391,969, and Marc Cucurella (Spain) rounds out the top five with 1,134,823 new followers (+29.1%), now on 5,034,422.

Percentage growth for this closing stage tells its own story, with a cluster of Spanish and English names benefiting from their countries’ runs deep into the competition. Djed Spence (England) leads with +79.6%, up to 1,389,423 followers, followed by Giuliano Simeone (Argentina) with +29.8%, up to 1,958,822 followers, Marc Cucurella (Spain) with +29.1%, up to 5,034,422 followers, Morgan Rogers (England) with +17.2%, up to 1,135,846 followers, and Pedro Porro (Spain) with +16.3%, up to 1,311,656 followers.

Ferran Torres (Spain), who scored the winning goal in the Final, added +1,630,067 new followers across the full tournament (+21.9%), including +1,046,464 of that just between the Semi-Finals and Final alone (+13.0%), taking him to 9,076,837 total followers.

The nations table for this closing stretch was led by Spain with +8,681,908 new followers, followed by Argentina on +7,610,729, England on +5,801,215, and Norway on +3,020,637, with Haaland alone accounting for the vast majority of that total.

A spokesperson for MyBettingSites.co.uk comments:

“Erling Haaland finishes this tournament as the biggest Instagram gainer in raw numbers, adding over 31.8 million new followers since the World Cup began, a figure that overtook Vozinha’s total in the final stretch as Norway’s run went deep. However, Vozinha’s story is still the more remarkable one in percentage terms, though. Going from 31,538 followers to over 29 million is a rise of more than 93,000% for the Cape Verde goalkeeper, and nothing else in this tournament came close to it. 

Spain’s Lamine Yamal led the way in the final tracking period, adding almost 4 million new followers between after the Semi-Finals and the Final (16 to 20 July), with England’s Jude Bellingham close behind with 3.76 million new followers and Erling Haaland third with 2.89 million. Spain’s Ferran Torres, who scored the winning goal in the Final, added over 1 million new followers in that same window alone, a reminder of just how quickly a single moment on the pitch can translate into a following of this size. 

What’s stood out across the full six weeks is how many players went from relative anonymity to millions of followers. Douglas Santos, Eloy Room, Mostafa Ziko, Sidny Lopes Cabral – none of them arrived at this World Cup as household names, and all of them are leaving it with followings several multiples the size they started with. That’s the story of this tournament as much as any of the football was.”

Conclusion

Across the whole tournament, nearly 295 million new Instagram followers were added by the 1,200+ players tracked, a figure that captures how much the World Cup drives attention to the players involved, whether they win or lose. Vozinha’s rise from 31,538 followers to over 29 million remains the standout story of the tournament by percentage, a growth rate that nothing else came close to matching. Haaland’s story is different but just as remarkable: he added more raw followers than any other player across the full 6 weeks, overtaking Vozinha in the final stretch as Norway’s run pushed his numbers higher and higher. Between them, the two accounted for over 61 million of the nearly 295 million followers gained tournament-wide, though the tournament also produced dozens of smaller breakout stories, including Douglas Santos, Eloy Room and Mostafa Ziko. These players went from relative anonymity to millions of followers within a few weeks.

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