In the third of our series of four articles on the performance of irish Sport on social media last month we are focusing on Facebook
This data is supplied by our partners Olytico.
Read about our introduction to this month and the detail from Irish sporting bodies on X
Read about the detail from Irish sporting bodies on Facebook
February 2026 Highlights on Instagram
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Overview
Instagram activity rose 7% to 3,164 posts, while engagements increased slightly (+1%) to 2,541,977.
As with the other channels we are comparing these figures to those of 2025 and 2024. With the exception of Facebook which showed an increase in engagement, Instagram dropped by 50% from a figure of over 5 million to one of just over half that.
The biggest reason for this was a falling off of the Irish Rugby engagement which was 15,125 per post last year but down to 3,151 in February 2026.
The GAA, Ireland Football and Ulster Rugby accounts among the Top three on this metric all saw significant increases in engagement per post so perhaps this was more a glitch in timing for the Irish Rugby account.
Team ireland, Athletics Ireland and Cricket Ireland also recorded increases in engagement on the same period last year from within the Top 10.
Specific Highlights
The NIFL (602, +18%) was the most active account on the platform, followed by the League of Ireland (593, +65%) and Squash Ireland (213, +48%), as the Trinity A* team were crowned Division A champions at the 2026 Intervarsities.
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Special Olympics Ireland (15, +114%) are counting down the days to the Ireland Summer Games taking place from 18-21 June, and Triathlon Ireland (22, +83%) brought us all the action from Waterford at Race 2 of the 2026 Duathlon National Series, the Tramore Medical Duathlon.
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View this post on Instagram
The GAA (4,961, +3%) topped the average engagement per post chart, as Kobe McDonald made his senior debut for Mayo.
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They were followed by Ireland Football (4,535, -17%) who celebrated Troy Parrott’s birthday with a recap of the heroic performance against Portugal, and Ulster Rugby (3,189, +96%) as Robert Baloucoune starred for Ireland against England .
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Canoeing Ireland (56, +93%) took us to the Kayaking Intervarsities 2026 on the River Liffey as over 250 paddlers from 13 colleges competed across whitewater, freestyle, long distance racing, and canoe polo with UCC taking the overall win.
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Whilst Athletics Ireland (834, +38%) saw Sophie Becker claim her first national senior 200m title.
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The League of Ireland (2,892) topped February’s engagements per 1,000 followers metric.
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Irish Rugby’s full-time score post from Twickenham was the most engaged piece of content on the platform in February, generating over 50,000 engagements. The number of likes was 10 times that on X though the X post was viewed 223,000 times.
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X Analysis – Wednesday AM
Facebook Analysis – Wednesday PM
Instagram Analysis – Thursday AM
TikTok Analysis – Thursday PM
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