Christmas 2026 Instagram ideas for online stores

The December calendar

Your own last delivery date matters more than any other date in December. Ask your courier for it, then put it on every post from the second week.

Gift guides that sell

A gift guide does the hard part for the shopper: it chooses. Three kinds work well.

• By person. For her, for him, for the one who has everything, for the friend who cooks.
• By price. Under one amount, one gift per slide.
• By moment. Secret Santa, the office party, the host present.

Tinker Town, an invented toy shop, makes each slide one gift with one reason, and ends on free gift-wrap and delivery before Christmas Eve:

Gift sets and wrapping

People buying for someone else want the decision made and the present ready to give. Show the set, what is inside and how it arrives. Maison Lune, an invented skincare brand, gives three sets a slide each and finishes with a question, which brings comments and tells you which set to push:

Ideas for every kind of store

• Food and drink: what to order for the table, the party or the late-night craving.
• Fashion: outfits for the office party, the family lunch and New Year’s Eve.
• Beauty: gift sets, the stocking filler under a price, the routine for winter skin.
• Home: the table set for Christmas lunch, candles and the host present.
• Gadgets: what to buy for the person who is hard to buy for.
• Kids: gifts by age, and the ones that get played with after the paper is gone.

Midnight Bake, an invented late-night bakery, turns a menu into a Christmas carousel: plum cake, stollen and ginger stars, one per slide, with the hour the last tray comes out:

Writing for December

• Name the person the gift is for. "For the one who has everything" sells better than "Our gift set".
• Put the delivery deadline on the first or the last slide, with the date.
• Keep your own look. In a feed full of red and gold, the brands people notice look like themselves.
• End with one ask: save this, comment your pick, or order by a date.

Stories, reels and ads in December

• Stories for the countdown. One story a day with the days left to your last delivery date and one product. Stories disappear, so they suit reminders.
• Reels for the gift itself. A short clip of a present being unwrapped, or a gift set being packed, shows what the carousel cannot: the moment of giving.
• Ads from the first week. December is a busy month for ads, so start early and let your best gift guide run as a carousel ad, with each card linked to its product.
• A pinned post. Pin your gift guide to the top of your profile until your last delivery date, then swap in your gift card post.

Make the slides 1080 by 1350 pixels so they fill the feed; our carousel size guide has every size for posts, stories and ads.

Coming from Black Friday

If you ran a Black Friday sale, December is the time to turn the same carousels into gift guides: the same products, a new reason to buy. Our Black Friday ideas have the plan for the weekend before.