Madrid vs Barcelona: who rules Instagram in each city

Spain's two biggest cities have very different Instagram maps. MVP's city rankings place people in the city where they live or build their career, and at the time of writing (1 November 2026) Madrid has 301 ranked profiles while Barcelona has 169. Madrid wins on volume, but the more interesting story is who sits at the top of each list and where they come from.

Madrid: an international dressing room

The Madrid Top 10 adds up to 467.1M followers, and one name accounts for almost a third of it. Kylian Mbappé leads the city with 136.9M, more than twice the count of second place, Vinícius Júnior (63.8M). Jude Bellingham completes the podium with 56.5M.

Football dominates the list: nine of the ten profiles are footballers. The only exception is the actress Ester Expósito, seventh with 25M, who is also one of just two Spaniards in the Top 10. The other is Iker Casillas, who closes it with 20.4M. The rest of the Top 10 is listed under France, Brazil, England and Germany.

Madrid's ranking is also the deeper of the two. The person in 30th place still has close to 8M followers, and beyond the top positions the city looks less like a football club and more like a film set: actors are the largest category in the whole Madrid list, with 104 profiles against 46 footballers.

Barcelona: a home-grown list

Barcelona's Top 10 adds up to 286.1M followers and has a very different accent. Lamine Yamal leads with 59.8M, followed by Andrés Iniesta (42.3M) and Dani Alves (34.1M).

Seven of the ten are listed under Spain, against two in Madrid. The list also has more variety at the top: Rosalía is fourth with 27.8M, the only musician in either Top 10, and Ibai Llanos brings streaming into the ranking with 16.5M. The other eight are footballers, from Pedri and Gavi to Gerard Piqué.

The gap between both cities grows further down. In Barcelona the 30th profile has around 2M followers, a quarter of Madrid's figure for the same position, so the city's ranking is much more concentrated in its first names.

Head to head

• Ranked profiles: 301 in Madrid, 169 in Barcelona.
• Combined Top 10: 467.1M in Madrid, 286.1M in Barcelona.
• Number one: Kylian Mbappé in Madrid, Lamine Yamal in Barcelona. Mbappé has more than twice Yamal's count.
• Footballers in the Top 10: nine in Madrid, eight in Barcelona.
• Spaniards in the Top 30: 16 in Madrid, 25 in Barcelona.

What the comparison shows

Madrid wins on size and on reach. Its top positions belong to international football stars, and behind them sits a long list of actors and musicians: 151 profiles between the two categories, against 67 in Barcelona. Of the two, it is the ranking that looks most like a global one.

Barcelona wins on identity. Its list is mostly Spanish, and it mixes football with music and streaming at the very top.

Both cities agree on one thing: football. Eighteen of the first 30 profiles are footballers in Madrid and also in Barcelona.

Where to look next

The full lists go well beyond the Top 10. See the complete Madrid ranking and the Barcelona ranking, or zoom out to the Spain ranking to see how both cities compare with the rest of the country. If you want to know how we place people in a city, read our methodology. And if someone based in either city is missing, you can submit a profile.