Does Each President Get a New POTUS Instagram?

Quick answer

Instagram's official @POTUS account is not a personal profile that gets deleted and rebuilt every four or eight years. It's an institutional account tied to the office of the presidency, similar to @WhiteHouse and @VP, and control of it passes to the new administration at each transition. The outgoing president does not keep using it after leaving office.

Key takeaways

• @POTUS, like its Twitter/X equivalent, represents the office of the presidency, not one individual's personal brand.
• This institutional-account model became a well-known practice starting with the Obama administration, when the @POTUS Twitter handle launched in 2015.
• At each presidential transition, control of the primary institutional handle passes to the incoming administration.
• Outgoing administration content is typically preserved through federal records and archival practices rather than simply deleted.
• A sitting president's personal or campaign Instagram account is a completely separate thing from the official @POTUS institutional account.

How the @POTUS account actually works

The key thing to understand is the distinction between a personal account and an institutional one. A president's personal Instagram — the one they may have used for years before taking office, tied to their own name and personal life — stays theirs before, during, and after their term. The @POTUS account is different: it exists because the office of the presidency has an official communications presence, staffed and managed by White House personnel, and it's handed off from administration to administration the same way the @WhiteHouse.gov domain or the White House press office itself is handed off.

This practice traces back to the Obama administration, which set the modern precedent for official presidential social media accounts, including the original @POTUS handle on Twitter/X launched in 2015. Once that model existed, it became the expected pattern for how future administrations would handle official digital accounts across platforms, Instagram included. When a new president is inaugurated, they don't have to build an audience from zero on the institutional account — they inherit the existing platform presence, and the account's content and framing shift to reflect the new officeholder.

What happens to the outgoing president's content

Official presidential records, including digital communications, are generally subject to federal records preservation practices — similar to how whitehouse.gov content is archived by the National Archives around the time of a transition. The general, well-established pattern is that an outgoing administration's official posts are preserved in some archived form rather than simply erased, so historical continuity isn't lost even as the live, primary account moves on to reflect the new administration. That said, the exact mechanics of how Instagram specifically handles this archiving process (as opposed to the more publicly documented Twitter/X precedent) aren't something we can pin down with precise dates or numbers, so it's worth treating any very specific claim about Instagram's own archive process with some caution.

Is this the same as a president's personal account?

No. It's easy to conflate these because both may show the same person's face and voice, but they are managed completely differently:

• A personal account belongs to the individual and typically continues under their control indefinitely, election or no election.
• A campaign account is run by a campaign organization for electoral purposes and may go dormant or get repurposed after a race ends.
• The institutional @POTUS account belongs to the office itself, is staffed by government communications personnel, and transitions to whoever currently holds the position.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Assuming @POTUS is a president's personal account that they keep using after leaving office — it isn't, and they don't.
• Confusing a president's campaign account with the official institutional account; they serve very different purposes and have different ownership.
• Treating follower counts or old posts on the institutional account as belonging permanently to whichever individual happened to hold office when you last checked.

Tips

• If you want to follow a specific person rather than the office, look for their personal or campaign account instead of the institutional @POTUS handle.
• Be skeptical of any account claiming special presidential access that asks for money or personal information — verify official accounts through recognized government channels.
• Remember that institutional account content reflects government communications, and its tone or focus can shift noticeably with each transition.