Instagram is introducing a new accolade called the Ring, which is a curated recognition for 25 standout creators who are shaping culture and defying conventions.
The program prioritizes prestige over payouts, linking a physical designer ring with a high-visibility digital exclamation point bestowed on winners’ profiles — intended to suggest who sits at the top of Instagram’s creative class.
What the Ring Award Has to Offer Winners on Instagram
Winners will also receive a bespoke gold ring designed by the prom queen of Britain’s high-fashion scene Grace Wales Bonner, who is recognized for her luxe craftsmanship and cultural storytelling. In addition to the physical piece, recipients receive a digital golden ring that circles their Instagram profile, as well as the ability to create a bespoke Like button animation for liked posts.
There’s no cash or revenue share, and Instagram has also confirmed that discovery through algorithmic surfaces won’t be guaranteed. In other words, the worth is reputational: a conspicuous status marker, a designer artifact, and a flourish of creative self-assertion that burnishes on-platform identity. For creators who are working with brands or agencies, that sort of social proof can be a form of leverage in its own right.
Who Is Judging the Selection for Instagram’s Ring Award
The panel combines platform leadership with cultural heavy hitters.
Among them are Instagram head Adam Mosseri, filmmaker Spike Lee, designer Marc Jacobs, tech creator Marques Brownlee, actor and producer Yara Shahidi, and legendary makeup artist Pat McGrath. The mix of ingredients in that stew suggests that the Ring is intended to bestow “taste”-based prestige, more like a cultural award with jurors than merely a metrics-based milestone.
Instagram frames its criteria around creative risk-taking, community impact, and boundary-pushing work. That shifts the focus to originality and impact across categories (think fashion, film, beauty, tech—you name it), over sheer follower numbers by themselves.
Why a Symbolic Prize for Creators Matters Right Now
The timing is notable. Meta has rolled back direct creator payouts over the last few years, including scaling down its Reels bonus program and canceling some profile-based ad revenue experiments. And yet there are signs of softer demand from brands for many creators: A 2024 survey of Kajabi users found that brand deals were down by 52 percent year over year, while Bank of America has observed a concentration of paid partnerships among the influencer top tier.
With that as a backdrop, a prestige award is cheaper for Instagram as it uses it to motivate and keep top talent. It also adds a new stratum of status on the platform — success that winners can turn into getting paid more, landing new partnerships, and breaking out in their industry. The wider creator economy is still enormous and cutthroat (Goldman Sachs has projected it might approach half a trillion dollars within a few years), so signals that distinguish the exceptional from the only moderately admired have market value.
How It Stacks Up Against Rival Platforms
YouTube’s Creator Awards, those shiny silver-to-diamond play buttons you know so well by now, are milestone-based and mostly based on subscriber counts. There are also Twitch’s Partner badge and TikTok’s verification, which provide a form of recognition but are subject to qualifying thresholds and platform rules. Instagram’s Ring is unlike the checklist: it’s jury-selected, style-forward, and purposefully rare — more like a film or fashion honor than a growth trophy.
The Like animated action is an insignificant but slick touch. It allows winners to carry their creative signature over to the central interaction that drives Instagram’s feed, possibly boosting engagement on posts while giving audiences a light reminder that they’re interacting with a Ring-level creator.
What Creators Should Be Watching Next From Instagram
“Instagram has not shared details around the selection process, categories or cadence of future groups,” an Instagram spokesperson said. The initial class is 25 creators, indicating that scarcity will be part of the brand. Look for talk of transparency and diversity of representation, since juried awards invariably come with questions about who gets noticed and why.
The pragmatic takeaway for creators is that they should double down on unique voice, community impact, and cross-cultural relevancy — the very things Instagram says it wants to promote. The Ring doesn’t replace businesses’ monetization tools, such as tipping or subscriptions, branded content partnerships, or shopping — rather, it can amplify those levers by adding an extra patina of credibility. In a market where attention has never been more plentiful and trust never so rare, a clear signal of excellence can be enough to draw some eyeballs.
Whether the Ring becomes an industry benchmark will depend on how carefully Instagram flavors its stew and how well winners turn prestige into opportunity. If the 25 honorees convert that gold halo effect into something quantifiable — higher CPMs, better deals, broader press — the award may wind up being one of the platform’s most effective retention tools.
