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Instagram has launched Rings, a new global awards programme recognising 25 standout creators from across the platform. The initiative celebrates individuals shaping culture through fashion, beauty, humour, sport, and social impact, rewarding them not for follower count but for creative influence.
Each winner will receive a bespoke gold ring designed by Grace Wales Bonner, the British-Jamaican Designer and Founder of Wales Bonner, renowned for blending luxury tailoring with Black cultural heritage. They’ll also receive a digital “golden ring” profile badge, exclusive design features, and a dedicated spotlight feed within the app.
The judging panel brings together a diverse mix of cultural heavyweights: Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram; Eva Chen, Vice President of Fashion Partnerships at Meta and former magazine editor; Spike Lee, Oscar-Winning Director; Pat McGrath, Makeup Artist and Founder of Pat McGrath Labs; Marc Jacobs, Fashion Designer and Creative Director of Marc Jacobs; Yara Shahidi, Actor and Activist; and KAWS, Contemporary Artist whose work bridges street culture and fine art.
Instagram plans to make Rings an annual fixture, positioning it as both a platform-native awards show and a cultural temperature check for digital creativity, a way of canonising who truly moves the algorithm and the aesthetic.
BTB So What?
We’ve seen this coming influencers increasingly occupying spaces once reserved for Hollywood elites. From Addison Rae’s newest Netflix role on Monster: The Ed Gein Story to creators appearing on the Emmys and Met Gala carpets, the convergence is complete. Influencers now play journalist, actor, and brand in one. Awards were inevitable. YouTube may have pioneered the format with its Creator Awards, rewarding scale through subscriber milestones. Instagram’s Rings is now reshaping that to reward taste, packaging creative legitimacy as design and status. Whether that’s progress or self-mythology is harder to say. The platforms that democratised fame are now formalising it, turning influence into institution.