The most-followed athletes on Instagram
The seven people Wikipedia's list of Instagram's 50 most-followed accounts describes by a sport alone, in the order of the followers each one's own profile shows.
How this list was made
The rule: Instagram followers, most first
To be on this list, an account belongs to a person Wikipedia's list of the 50 most-followed Instagram accounts describes by a sport alone (footballer, cricketer, basketball player), as that list stood on October 23, 2026, last updated there on October 6.
The order is the follower count on the athlete's own Instagram profile, as the profile header showed it to a signed-out reader on October 23, 2026, largest first. Instagram rounds the figure; we print it as the header shows it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_Instagram_accounts
Cristiano Ronaldo
Footballer from Portugal, and the most-followed person on Instagram in Wikipedia's list.
Lionel Messi
Footballer from Argentina; his profile carries the name Leo Messi.
Virat Kohli
Cricketer from India, and the one cricketer on the list.
Neymar
Footballer from Brazil; his profile carries the name Neymar Jr.
LeBron James
Basketball player from the United States, and the one basketball player on the list.
David Beckham
Footballer from the United Kingdom.
Questions about this list
- Why is Dwayne Johnson not on the list?
- Wikipedia's list puts his account above every athlete here but two. It describes him as an actor and professional wrestler, and Wikipedia's entry on him calls him an actor first, so he falls outside a rule that counts people described by a sport alone.
- Why only seven?
- The list stops where Wikipedia's top 50 stops. On October 6, 2026, the fiftieth account there had 85.2 million followers, and no other account in the 50 belongs to a person described by a sport alone.
- Why do the figures differ from what a search result shows?
- Instagram rounds the count differently in different places; a link preview showed 680M for Cristiano Ronaldo on the same night his profile header showed 679M. The list prints the header.
- Can an athlete pay to be added?
- No. Entries come from the rule and the public record, never from a request or a payment.
See a mistake? Write to the editors at editors@mysweetmags.com and the list is corrected with the date of the change.
