The best time to post on Instagram in the UK is Wednesday at 12 pm or 6 pm, and Thursday at 9 am, UK time. On Monday and Tuesday, post around 7 pm. Friday and Saturday are the weakest days of the week, and Sunday only picks up after 8 pm.
| Day | Best time (UK) | Backup slot | Strength |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 7 pm | 6 pm or 8 pm | Moderate |
| Tuesday | 7 pm | 3 pm to 5 pm | High |
| Wednesday | 12 pm | 6 pm | Best day |
| Thursday | 9 am | 12 pm to 2 pm | Very high |
| Friday | 9 pm to 10 pm | 6 am | Weak |
| Saturday | 9 pm | 8 pm | Weak |
| Sunday | 9 pm | 8 pm or 10 pm | Moderate |
The data behind it
These slots come from Buffer’s 2026 study of 9.6 million Instagram posts, which was normalised to local time, so its 12 pm is 12 pm in Leeds as much as in Los Angeles. I haven’t seen a credible UK-only dataset of any size, and I’d be wary of any article that claims one without naming it. Two other large studies back the pattern. Sprout Social’s analysis of nearly 2 billion engagements puts the peaks at Tuesday 1 pm to 7 pm and Wednesday 12 pm to 9 pm. Hootsuite’s, built on over a million posts across 118 countries, likes Monday and Tuesday from 3 pm onward.
How British routines fit the numbers
The Thursday 9 am result looks strange until you think about how many people in the UK commute by train, tube or bus. A seated commuter with a phone is a captive audience between roughly 7:30 am and 9 am, and Thursday is when people start planning the weekend. If you sell anything weekend-shaped (restaurants, events, days out, fashion), Thursday morning is your slot.
Wednesday at noon is the lunch-at-desk scroll. It’s short, so use it for something quick to take in: a single strong photo or a carousel with a clear first slide. Save Reels for 6 pm to 10 pm, when people have the patience to watch with sound on.
Friday evening is genuinely bad here. People are at the pub, out for dinner or travelling, and the data shows it. I’d rather hold a good post until Sunday at 9 pm, which is the classic sofa-before-Monday moment and the strongest weekend slot.
Bank holiday Mondays behave like Sundays in my view, so treat the Tuesday after as your Monday. And the long summer evenings matter a bit: in June, when it’s light until 10 pm, the evening scroll starts later than it does in a dark, wet November. Shift your evening posts from 6 pm toward 8 pm in high summer and see whether reach improves.
Clock changes and overseas followers
The UK moves to BST on the last Sunday of March and back to GMT on the last Sunday of October. Your UK followers move with the clocks, so nothing changes for a domestic audience. Make sure your scheduling tool is set to Europe/London and it will adjust on its own.
It does matter for American followers. A 6 pm UK post reaches New York at 1 pm and Los Angeles at 10 am, which is a decent slot for both. The US changes its clocks two to three weeks before the UK in spring and a week after in autumn, so for those few weeks the gap is four hours instead of five. For followers across the Channel, my Europe timing guide covers how one post can work from Lisbon to Athens.
Find your own best time
In the Instagram app, open the professional dashboard, tap your follower total and scroll down to the active-times chart. It shows the hours your own followers are online, day by day. Instagram’s Adam Mosseri recommends posting 30 to 60 minutes before that peak. Aim for three to five feed posts a week, keep it up for a month, then look at reach per post in an Instagram analytics tool and adjust. If you can’t be at your phone at 9 am on a Thursday, an Instagram scheduler will be.