Following the World Cup final, MyBettingSites.co.uk has run the final update of its tracker of Instagram follower gains across all 1,200+ players at the 2026 tournament.
This update covers the full tournament as a whole (8 June to 20 July), before zooming in on the gains between Semi-Finals and Final alone (16 July to 20 July), and closing with a look at the scale of growth across the competition as a whole.
Instagram Follower Gains Across World Cup: 8 June to 20 July
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.
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.
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.
The full breakdown for all 1,200+ players, with a toggle between full-tournament and Semi-Finals-and-Final-only views, nation rankings, top gainers and individual growth charts, is available in the interactive graphic below.
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