Instagram giveaway rules: what you must include

A giveaway on Instagram has to follow two sets of rules: Instagram's promotion guidelines, and the law where you and your entrants live. Instagram's part is short and the same everywhere. The legal part depends on the country, the prize and how the winner is picked.

What Instagram requires

Instagram's promotion guidelines say that whoever runs a promotion is responsible for running it lawfully, including:

• The official rules.
• The offer terms and who can enter, such as age and residency limits.
• Following the laws that apply to the promotion and its prizes, such as registering it or getting approval where that's required.

Every promotion on Instagram must also include:

• A complete release of Instagram by each entrant.
• An acknowledgement that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Instagram.

And you must not tag content inaccurately or encourage others to, for example by asking people to tag themselves in a photo they aren't in. Asking people to tag friends in the comments is fine. Instagram won't help you run the promotion; using Instagram for it is at your own risk.

Sweepstakes or contest?

If the winner is picked at random, it's a sweepstakes or prize draw. If the winner is judged on merit, such as the best photo, it's a contest, and the rules must say who judges and on what criteria. Most comment-to-enter giveaways are sweepstakes.

Don't charge to enter

In the United States and many other countries, a prize plus chance plus a required payment or purchase makes a lottery, which only governments may run. A comment-to-enter giveaway avoids that because entering is free. Never make buying something a condition of entry.

Rules that depend on where you are

• United States, registration: New York and Florida require games of chance with prizes worth more than $5,000 in total to be registered and bonded in advance (Florida exempts some nonprofits). Many sponsors exclude those states instead.
• United States, taxes: prizes are taxable income for the winner. For prizes awarded from 2026, the sponsor sends a Form 1099-MISC when one winner's prizes total $2,000 or more in a year (it was $600 before).
• Canada: a winner picked by chance usually has to answer a skill-testing question correctly before receiving the prize.
• Brazil: Instagram reminds promoters to follow the rules of the Ministry of Finance's Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA), which can require authorization for free prize distributions.
• Personal data: collect only what you need to run the giveaway and deliver the prize, and say how you'll use it. In the EU and UK this is a legal requirement.

Checklist for your official rules

1. 01Who is running the giveaway and how to contact them.
2. 02Who can enter: minimum age, countries or states, and who is excluded, such as employees and their families.
3. 03Start and end date and time, with the time zone.
4. 04How to enter, and how many entries each person gets.
5. 05How and when the winner is picked.
6. 06The prize, its value and the number of winners.
7. 07How winners are contacted, how long they have to reply, and what happens if they don't.
8. 08How entrants' personal data is used.
9. 09The release of Instagram and the statement that Instagram isn't involved.

Where to put the rules

A caption doesn't have room for everything. Put the entry steps, the closing date and the statement in the caption, and the full rules on a web page linked from your bio. When it's time to draw, the Instagram comment picker applies the same rules you wrote: one entry per person, a keyword, a minimum number of mentions and a closing time. For the whole process, see how to do a giveaway on Instagram.