What a hashtag is, where it came from and how it works on Instagram

What is a hashtag, in plain terms

The term joins two English words: hash, a common name for the # symbol, and tag, meaning a label. You type the pound sign and then text or an emoji, with no space. According to Instagram Help, it goes into a caption or a comment. Once the post is live, it works as a link.

Take a ceramics studio in Portland. Under a photo of a new mug, it writes «#portlandceramics». Anyone who taps it lands on a separate page. That page gathers photos and videos other people shared with it. This is the hashtag page: a feed of photos and videos under one word.

It shows what the symbol is for. Work by strangers sits side by side without a shared group or chat. For a creator, it brings viewers who care about the same thing. For a viewer, one tap shows what others share on the topic.

Where the hashtag came from

The symbol marked groups before social networks existed. Wikipedia notes that IRC (Internet Relay Chat) networks adopted it around 1988 to label groups and topics.

Chris Messina, an American blogger and consultant, brought it to social media. On August 23, 2007, he asked on Twitter how people felt about using the pound sign for groups. His example was «#barcamp». Two days later he laid out the proposal on his blog, pointing to IRC as a proven model and calling the groups channels.

The name followed within days. Wikipedia credits blogger Stowe Boyd with the first published use of the term, in an entry dated August 26, 2007. In July 2009 Twitter began linking every such tag in a tweet to search results. The American Dialect Society voted the term its word of the year for 2012. In June 2014 it entered the Oxford English Dictionary.

How hashtags work on Instagram

The tag page

The help center describes the path in a few lines. A creator adds the tag to a caption or comment. A viewer taps it and sees photos and videos shared with it. Posts from private accounts don't show up on the page for the public. You can only add tags to your own photos and videos, not other people's.

Search

The search bar leads to the same pages. Meta's Transparency Center lists what Instagram Search returns in a card updated June 23, 2026: tags, places, reels, posts, profiles and audio. Suggested tags rest on clicks from people in your country who ran the same search. The system compares how often a suggested tag gets tapped with how often it gets shown. Another signal is how closely the words in your query match the tag.

In November 2024 Instagram announced it would remove the option to follow tags. Tagging and searching by tag stay available.

Order on the page

Nothing there sits in random order. Instagram Help names three factors: when the post was shared, how others engage with it and whether it meets the Recommendation Guidelines. The first two mean fresh posts that people respond to rise higher, while older ones slide down over time. Instagram may also remove content from the page when people use the word for material that breaks Community Standards.

How to add a hashtag: caption, comment, stories

In a post or reel caption

1. Pick a photo or video and move on to the caption screen.
2. Tap the caption field.
3. Type the pound sign, then a word or an emoji right after it.
4. Separate the next tag with a space.
5. Share, and each tag turns into a link.

Instagram's creators account announced the five-tag cap on Threads on December 18, 2025, for reels and posts alike. You can also add tags after sharing: the help center suggests editing the caption. Our explainer on what reels are covers how a reel differs from a regular post.

In a comment

Tags also work in a comment under your own post. Type them the same way as in a caption. The five-tag cap applies here too, so a comment with a sixth one won't go out. This helps when something is already live and you forgot them.

In stories

A story gets its tag through a sticker. Instagram's help article on stickers gives the path:

1. Take a photo or video for your story, or pick one from your camera roll.
2. Tap Stickers at the top of the screen.
3. Choose the Hashtag sticker and type the word.
4. Place the sticker on a free spot in the frame and share the story.

Not every sticker is available to everyone, the article notes. Our guide to Instagram stories covers how to shoot and share the story itself.

How to write a hashtag and why it won't become a link

The help center keeps the spelling rules short. Text or an emoji goes after the symbol. Numbers are allowed. Spaces and special characters such as $ or % won't work.

How to write one

• As one word. Spaces don't work, so a phrase is written solid: «#handmadeceramics».
• Without special characters. Symbols such as $ and % break it. Letters and numbers work without trouble: «#craftfair2026».
• In Cyrillic and other scripts. The help center sets no alphabet rule, and its Russian version gives a Cyrillic example, «#цветы», which means flowers.
• With emoji. An emoji right after the symbol works as well.

Why a tag didn't work

• There is a space between the symbol and the word: «# ceramics».
• It contains a character that isn't accepted: $, % or another special symbol.
• There are more than five, so the comment never went out.
• The account is private, so the public won't see the post on the tag page.
• The tag was pulled from search. Instagram Help explains that this happens when its text or the content under it consistently breaks the Terms of Use or Community Standards. Instagram reviews such tags from time to time and may restore them.

When posts stop showing up under tags altogether, people call it a shadowban. Our article on what causes a shadowban explains how it looks and why it happens.

Types of hashtags

The split below is not Instagram's own. It sorts tags by what they name: a subject, a brand, an event or a place.

Topic tags

A topic tag like «#ceramics» tells viewers at once what the content is about. Plenty of creators share under a broad word like that. New work keeps arriving, so yours slides down fast.

Branded tags

A brand invents its own, say «#clayandfire» after the studio's name. Buyers add it under photos of a purchase, and the reviews gather in one place. It works only while people know it, so the studio prints it in the bio and on packaging.

Event tags

An event tag is tied to a date: a fair, a contest, a holiday. The organizer announces it in advance, and participants mark their photos with it. «#portlandcraftfair2026» gathers pictures from one fair. After the event, few new posts arrive under it.

Local tags

A tag with a city or district name suits businesses that sell nearby: studios, cafés, salons. Search returns both places and tags. So a local tag goes next to a location tag: people can find the post through the place and through «#portland».

Which hashtags to use for your topic

Once the basics are clear, what remains is choosing the words. Our guide to picking tags in 2026 covers how many to add and how to build a set.

The hard part is seeing which tags are in use in your own niche. The Sled report helps here. It works from public content, and you don't need a password or a login to your account. Name a tag or a topic, and we read the top of its feed. The report has four parts:

• Posts from the top of the feed, each with its reach and reactions.
• Tags that repeat most often among the strong ones.
• How many tags those creators actually use.
• The format and duration of that content.

The report records a match, not a cause. Instagram ranks content by how viewers behave, so a weak video with the same set won't take off. The value is simpler: you pick words the niche already uses instead of guessing.

Common questions