Can you use hashtags in Instagram Stories?

What Instagram says

Two pages of Instagram’s Help Center, read on 23 October 2026, say a story can carry a hashtag. Neither gives a number.

• The Hashtag sticker. The page on stickers lists Hashtag among the stickers for a story. You enter the hashtag you want, and anyone who can see your story can tap it to open that hashtag’s page.
• Text on the story. The page of tips for recording and editing a story says that when you add text you can enter a hashtag, with #flower as its example, and people can tap it to view the hashtag’s page. The same list says to type @ and a username to mention someone.

The Help Center has no article about hashtags in Stories as such. These two lines are what it says, and the next sections stay inside them.

How to add one

The steps below join the iPhone version of the page on sharing a story to the sticker page. Android has its own version of that page, which we did not read.

1. Tap Create at the top, or swipe right anywhere in Feed, then scroll to Story at the bottom.
2. Take a photo or video, or swipe up to pick one from your gallery.
3. Tap Sticker, choose Hashtag and enter the hashtag. Or tap Text and type the # and the word.
4. Tap Your Story in the bottom left when it is ready.

What each tappable element does

Four of the things a viewer can tap in a story, as Instagram describes them on the sticker page and the tips page.

A hashtag in a story is a way for a viewer to go somewhere. It is not described as a way for a story to be found.

What Instagram doesn’t say

• Unverified: whether a story appears on the hashtag’s page. The page on where a story appears lists your profile ring, the top of Feed, Feed next to your posts, Direct, the map, and, for a public account, Search & Explore and shared stories. A hashtag page is not on the list. The page on hashtag pages speaks of public photos and videos shared with the hashtag, and does not mention stories.
• Unverified: whether the limit of 5 applies. The hashtag page says up to 5 tags on a post. Instagram’s @creators announcement says up to 5 in a reel or post. Neither mentions a story.
• Unverified: who has the sticker. The sticker page says not every sticker is available to everyone. Its opening note about Japan and Europe doesn’t say which feature it means, so we don’t read it as a statement about this one.
• Unverified: adding it from a computer. Instagram’s 2026 guide to Stories says the story creator on instagram.com lets you add basic edits, and that some features, such as certain stickers, are mobile-only (the guide). It does not say whether the Hashtag sticker is one of them.

Stories sent through a tool

Mellow Hub publishes an Instagram story through Instagram’s API as one picture or one video. Stories take exactly one item. Reels take one video. Hub refuses a story with more than one item, and says so before anything is sent. Meta’s API reference says publishing stickers is not supported for stories, with links, polls and locations as its examples, and that mentioning users without a sticker is supported (Meta for Developers). It does not name the Hashtag sticker, and we have not tried one through Hub.

So if a story needs a tappable hashtag, make the story in the Instagram app. Instagram’s pages on sharing and editing a story describe text, drawings and stickers on the picture and no caption, so we would not count on a hashtag written in a caption field showing up on a story.

Hub is one way to schedule a story, not the only one; scheduling Stories covers the Instagram app and Meta Business Suite as well.

The first 3 posts are free, however many networks each one goes to, and need no card. After that Hub is paid: plans start at $19 a month (Solo), after a 7-day trial with a card on file that costs nothing if you cancel before it ends, and a monthly plan's first month is 20% off. Publishing is unlimited on every plan, under a fair-use ceiling that stops automated floods (900 publications a month on Solo), where one publication is one post on one account, so a post sent to five networks counts as five toward it. There are no automatic overage charges.