The world’s most Instagrammable national parks

The world’s national parks are filled with some of Mother Earth’s most stunning scenery.  

But which national parks are the most popular on social media? To find out, we have analysed 98 of the world’s best national parks, looking at Instagram and

With 4.3 million hashtags on Instagram, the Grand Canyon National Park has been crowned the most Instagrammable national park in the world. Home to most of the Grand Canyon, the park has dusty trails, incredible views, and plenty of tales of the American West. Made up of the North, South, and West Rim, most visitors head to the South Rim, where you’ll find the Bright Angel Trail, the South Kaibab Trail, the Desert View Watchtower, and plenty of hotels and tours to choose from. The North Rim is the more remote side of the national park and is popular with hikers and campers, though it is only open for a short summer season.

With 4,136,986 hashtags, England’s largest national park is home to some epic landscapes, picturesque villages, and lots of hiking trails. Windermere is the largest lake in the park at 10.5 miles long, with plenty of walks to take you along the water’s edge. Towering over the park at 3,209 feet high, England’s biggest mountain, Scafell Pike, is a must-see too. With three main routes providing very different experiences, each trail takes a full day to complete, but the views at the top are definitely worth it. 

With over 4.3 billion hashtag views on TikTok, Yellowstone has ranked as Earth’s most TikTokable national park. Established in 1872, Yellowstone is the world’s first-ever national park and spreads through Wyoming, Montana, and parts of Idaho. Visitors can expect to enjoy sweeping canyons, winding rivers, and alpine meadows, but the park is perhaps best known for its unique hydrothermal features. The park sits on top of a dormant volcano and is home to more geysers and hot springs than any other place on the planet. The park’s most famous geyser is Old Faithful, a highly predictable geothermal feature that has erupted every 44 minutes to two hours since 2000.

With 1.3 billion hashtag views, Canada’s first national park, Banff, is home to Rocky Mountain peaks, glacial lakes, and thick pine forests. The park’s most famous lake is Lake Louise, with its bright blue waters and backdrop of Mount Victoria. In the summer, visitors can rent canoes to head out onto the water, and in winter, you can grab a pair of ice skates and glide (or stumble) across the frozen lake. Every January, Lake Louise also hosts an annual Ice Magic festival, which brings together some of the best ice sculptors in the world. 

This research also examined which of the world’s national parks are hidden gems by analysing the parks with the least hashtags on Instagram. 

With a mere 38 Instagram hashtags, Réunion National Park is the world’s top hidden gem when it comes to national parks. Located on Réunion Island, a French-speaking island off the coast of Madagascar, the park is filled with hundreds of hiking trails that cross mountains, rainforests, sugarcane plantations, and volcanic fields. Home to over 200 microclimates, the landscape variety is huge here, and there are also around 800 native species on the island.

With just 148 hashtags on Instagram, located in the southern part of central Mongolia, half of the park’s terrain is made up of the Gurvan Saikhan Mountains, which are locally known as the ‘Three Beauties.’ The park also encompasses part of the Gobi Desert, and visitors might be lucky enough to catch glimpses of snow leopards, Gobi bears, lynx, gazelles, and wildcats here.

Using a seedlist of 98 national parks from a list of the best national parks in the world, the number of images under each hashtag for each national park on Instagram and the number of views for each hashtag on TikTok were collated. A ranking was then created for the ‘Most Instagrammable’ and ‘Most TikToked’ national parks. 

To note: The name of each national park was searched, for example, #Yellowstone. However, where results for the hashtag appeared that weren't relevant to the study, 'national park' was included, i.e., #Zionnationalpark, to ensure the results were accurate and relevant to the study. 

All data was collected on August 3rd 2023.