Instagram is expanding to television screens, rolling out its Instagram for TV app to Samsung Smart TVs across the United States and testing features built for the living room. Announced June 22, 2026 via the Meta Newsroom, the Samsung rollout covers 2020 models and newer, joining Amazon Fire TV, where the app debuted in December 2025, and Google TV, added in February 2026. With Samsung on board, Instagram for TV now sits on the three biggest connected TV platforms in the country.

The TV app organizes Reels into interest-based channels covering comedy, sports, music, and favorite creators, and supports up to five accounts per device so household members get personalized feeds. Instagram is testing several features aimed at larger displays: casting Reels straight from a phone to the TV, including anything saved in the Saved tab; Stories on the big screen; and a dedicated home for horizontal 16:9 video, a notable shift for a platform that built its identity on vertical 9:16.

The horizontal test acknowledges a basic mismatch: vertical phone content does not translate cleanly to a widescreen television. A dedicated horizontal surface gives creators who produce widescreen content a pathway to TV audiences and brings Instagram’s format architecture closer to broadcast standards. Instagram is also exploring longer formats for the big screen, including episodic series and microdramas, plus Live on TV, telling creators it is working closely with creators to understand what works best on TV and how these experiences can complement the ways people already use Instagram.

The push follows Instagram head Adam Mosseri’s signal at Bloomberg’s Screentime conference in October 2025: if behaviour and the consumption of these platforms is moving to TV, then we need to move to TV, too. It places Instagram in more direct competition with YouTube and TikTok for connected-TV viewing and opens a new connected-TV advertising surface for Meta.

For creators, the takeaway is to start thinking in 16:9 again. A horizontal cut of your best-performing Reels, an episodic series format, or a live show concept now has a potential home on the biggest screen in the house, and early movers on new surfaces historically get outsized distribution. Keep an eye on the horizontal video test. The creators with widescreen-ready catalogs will be first through the door.