originally posted to www.carnsight.com

The 2016 vs 2026 trend was all over everyone’s feed last month, and it’s had us thinking about a true relic of the decade: the humble hashtag.

Long gone are the days of loading an Instagram caption with 20- or 30-odd hashtags, where quantity was more synonymous with quality (or at least, efficacy). There followed a time when we saw the switch to trying to keep captions cleaner and more streamlined by hiding the chunky paragraphs of hashtags in the comments, often copied the same blocks from post to post, and watched the reach climb. That era peaked in the mid-2010s. Since then, Instagram has steadily stripped hashtags of their power: removing the ability to follow them, deprioritising hashtag feeds, and shifting how content is discovered altogether.

Hashtags still exist (obviously, and despite many a clickbait claim that they’re dead), but they’re no longer the main driver of reach, and the way they’re used has certainly evolved and diminished. Discovery on Instagram now looks much more like search, intent and relevance than a race to trend.

*A quick caveat: we’re focusing specifically on Instagram here (not Meta/Facebook, not LinkedIn, not TikTok). Those platforms are on their own journeys, and we’ll be getting into those in future posts.

Are hashtags still relevant?

Yes… and no. But mostly yes, just not how you might initially think, and not the way brands once relied on them. Instagram no longer relies on hashtags to categorise content. For the most part, AI now reads captions, visuals, audio, and engagement behaviour.

The way that users can interact with hashtags has also changed. You haven’t been able to ‘follow’ a hashtag since about December 2024. Since then, posts from followed hashtags no longer appear in users’ feeds. Users can still search and use hashtags for content discovery and categorisation, but this change pushed users toward the algorithm-driven “For You” (hello TikTok copycat) and Explore pages, encouraging more engagement with accounts and interests rather than relying on hashtag feeds. At least, that’s how it was pitched.

The move certainly seemed to signal the reduced importance of hashtags at the time and placed even more of a hard ceiling on organic tools for discoverability. There is, of course, the argument – and fair one, we’d say – that hashtag stuffing of the 2010s increasingly oversaturated searchability; overuse and repetition diluted quality signals, and hashtags could no longer be relied upon as one of the primary signals of interest/quality. Hence, the diversification of value-signals.

Instagram has carefully spent years moving away from manual signals (like hashtags) and towards automated understanding. Its systems now analyse:

• What’s said in captions

• What appears in the image or video

• What’s spoken in Reels

• Who engages, how long they watch, and what they do next

All of that is to say that hashtags have become somewhat redundant, not because they are “bad”, but because the platform no longer needs them to understand content.

Instagram has made no secret that accounts will benefit less from hashtags and more from SEO-forward strategies (Adam Mosseri has spoken about searchable captions and SEO for Instagram repeatedly).

Is hashtag stuffing bad?

In a word? Yes.

Mass blocks of broad or generic hashtags (#marketing, #business, #instagood) don’t help. They add noise, reduce clarity, and can even damage relevance signals when they don’t align with the content itself. Overstuffing also contributed to the hashtag spam problem that helped prompt Instagram’s removal of hashtag following in the first place.

These days, hashtag stuffing can be counterproductive. If everything is tagged, nothing is prioritised.

How should brands use hashtags in 2026?

This is where it gets interesting. Hashtags aren’t dead, but they have been pushed into a new role. Instead of discovery drivers, they’ve transitioned into contextual helpers, search cues, and community markers.

• Prioritise relevance over reach-chasing: use hashtags that actually describe what your content is about. Think of them as SEO for Instagram’s internal search, not devices for mass exposure.
• Keep them tight and tidy: a small handful of specific, meaningful hashtags will outperform a stack of 20 generic ones any day.
• Lean into branded and community hashtags: even though followers won’t see hashtagged posts in their feed anymore, branded tags remain powerful tools for rallying communities, encouraging user-generated content, and categorising campaign activity. They are still searchable and still useful for discovery, just in a different way.
• Think SEO-first, not hashtag-first: Instagram has been pushing searchable captions and keyword relevance for a while now. Your caption is now your most powerful discovery tool, not your hashtag block.
• Don’t rely on hashtags for reach: create content that encourages engagement (watch time, saves, shares) as these are now Instagram’s strongest signals. Hashtags are the seasoning, not the main ingredient.

The bottom line: hashtags aren’t gone, but they have grown up

The 2010s may have belonged to the hashtag, but the 2020s belong to relevance, intent and intelligent discovery. For brands, that means:

• Less focus on volume
• More focus on clarity
• No more copy‑pasting blocks of hashtags
• A renewed emphasis on caption SEO, engagement signals and high-quality creative

Hashtags still matter, but they shouldn’t be the hero of your strategy.

As Instagram leans deeper into AI-driven recommendation systems, the best thing brands can do is adapt with it. Stay intentional, stay relevant, and treat hashtags as part of a bigger, smarter ecosystem of discoverability.

And if you’d like help refining your hashtag strategy, reshaping your Instagram SEO approach or rethinking your 2026 content plan… we’re always here to help 😉

About Carnsight Communications

At Carnsight Communications we create strategies and campaigns to showcase our clients’ brilliant work through PR, content and social media. We help them get noticed by the right audience, at the right time. We specialise in creative agency PR.