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The Best LinkedIn Post Format in 2026 (We Measured 1.2 Million Posts)

Content Creation

Naïlé Titah

Last updated: 5 Jun 2026

Ask ten LinkedIn experts which post format performs best and you will get ten confident answers, zero numbers. So we measured it: 1,207,797 posts published over the last 12 months, every format LinkedIn offers, judged on what they actually earned. Then we went back four years to see which formats are rising, which are dying, and who the masters of each one are.

The short version: image posts and carousels tie at the top (34 median likes), video sits just behind (33) and is the only format still climbing, text-only earns half of that (16), link posts a third (10), and polls almost nothing (6).

The longer version has twists, faces and four years of history. Start with the board:

Median likes and median reach per LinkedIn post format, measured on 1.2 million posts

TL;DR: Image and carousel posts lead LinkedIn in 2026 (34 median likes each, measured on 1.2M posts); video is the only format still rising, and polls come last at 6.

The full table

Format	Posts measured	Median likes	Median comments	Median reach*
Image	731,277	34	7	823
Carousel	69,835	34	9	1,031
Video	122,165	33	6	708
Document	6,380	18	2	544
Text only	195,686	16	4	664
Link / article	71,326	10	1	414
Poll	11,126	6	3	1,154

*Reach (impressions) measured on the subset of posts with synced analytics: 567,082 posts. Medians, never averages, so a handful of viral posts cannot distort anything.

Everything you need to grow on LinkedIn. In one place.

Write in your voice, find ideas, schedule, analyse, engage…
MagicPost is built exclusively for LinkedIn.

Try MagicPost

Naïlé Titah

CEO at MagicPost

LinkedIn ने अपना एल्गोरिदम फिर से बदल दिया है। और इस बार, यह ध्यान देने योग्य है।

मैं जानने के लिए अच्छी स्थिति में हूँ:

Everything you need to grow on LinkedIn. In one place.

Write in your voice, find ideas, schedule, analyse, engage…
MagicPost is built exclusively for LinkedIn.

Try MagicPost

Naïlé Titah

CEO at MagicPost

LinkedIn ने अपना एल्गोरिदम फिर से बदल दिया है। और इस बार, यह ध्यान देने योग्य है।

मैं जानने के लिए अच्छी स्थिति में हूँ:

Create your first LinkedIn post in under 5 minutes

With MagicPost, you save up to 4 hours a week, starting with your very first post. Spend less time writing and more time expanding your business.

Try MagicPost

No credit card required. No commitment. Just real-time savings.

100% free trial.

Reach is not engagement

Before reading any format advice, internalize this chart. Being seen and being rewarded are two different markets:

Median reach versus median likes per format: polls get seen, not rewarded

Two outliers tell the story. Carousels sit in the winning corner: best creator-made reach (1,031 median impressions) AND top-tier engagement. Polls sit alone in the "seen, not rewarded" corner: the highest median reach of any format (1,154 impressions) and the lowest engagement (6 likes). LinkedIn's algorithm still pushes polls hard; readers stopped rewarding them years ago. A poll buys you impressions and costs you the impression you leave.

Four years of formats: what changed

The 12-month table is a snapshot. The movie is more interesting:

Median likes per format per year, 2022 to 2026: video is the only format still climbing

Video is the format of the decade so far: 20 median likes in 2022, 38 in 2026. Nearly doubled, and in 2026 it overtook image posts for the first time.
Image went from 23 to 35, the steady compounder.
Carousels jumped in 2024 (23 → 34) and froze there. The format matured.
Text never moved: 15 in 2022, 16 in 2026. Four years of platform growth and the median text post gained one like.

And what people choose to post moved even more than what it earns:

Share of LinkedIn posts per format per year, 2022 to 2026

Image took over the feed: 44.8% of posts in 2022, 60.8% in 2026.
Text-only collapsed from 27.7% to 16.3%. Creators abandoned the format that never paid.
Link posts halved their share (16.4% → 6.1%): the reach penalty got learned, the hard way.
Carousels peaked in 2024 (6.9%) and slid to 5.0%, even though their engagement held. Fashion faded faster than performance.
Polls never crossed 1.2% of the feed. Some formats die loudly; polls died quietly.

(History note: our corpus grows over time, so year-to-year comparisons use medians within each year and should be read as directional. Every claim above survives that caveat comfortably.)

Where do you stand against these numbers? MagicPost's LinkedIn analytics break down your own posts the same way: formats, reach, engagement, best posts. And if you want these benchmark numbers refreshed in your inbox every month, subscribe to the MagicPost Benchmark.

Format by format, with the people who master them

A ranking like this hides a selection effect we want to name honestly: people do not choose formats at random. Quick reactions go in text posts; polished frameworks go in carousels. Part of each format's number is the work behind it, not the pixels. That is exactly why the masters below matter: they show the ceiling of each format, not just its median. (And if you want to study real examples beyond three faces, MagicPost's post inspiration library lets you search 2M+ posts by format and topic.)

Everything you need to grow on LinkedIn. In one place.

Write in your voice, find ideas, schedule, analyse, engage…
MagicPost is built exclusively for LinkedIn.

Try MagicPost

Naïlé Titah

CEO at MagicPost

LinkedIn ने अपना एल्गोरिदम फिर से बदल दिया है। और इस बार, यह ध्यान देने योग्य है।

मैं जानने के लिए अच्छी स्थिति में हूँ:

Everything you need to grow on LinkedIn. In one place.

Write in your voice, find ideas, schedule, analyse, engage…
MagicPost is built exclusively for LinkedIn.

Try MagicPost

Naïlé Titah

CEO at MagicPost

LinkedIn ने अपना एल्गोरिदम फिर से बदल दिया है। और इस बार, यह ध्यान देने योग्य है।

मैं जानने के लिए अच्छी स्थिति में हूँ:

Create your first LinkedIn post in under 5 minutes

With MagicPost, you save up to 4 hours a week, starting with your very first post. Spend less time writing and more time expanding your business.

Try MagicPost

No credit card required. No commitment. Just real-time savings.

100% free trial.

Image: the default for a reason

34 median likes, on 731,277 posts. The most-used format on LinkedIn (60.8% of the feed) and still tied for the most effective, four years after it started absorbing the feed. A simple photo or a chart doubles the median of the same words posted bare.

Carousel: the depth machine

34 median likes, the best creator-made reach (1,031 median impressions, on 34,700 measured), and the strongest dose-response curve we found anywhere:

Median likes by carousel slide count: 13-20 slides earn 2.6x the short ones

Slides	Carousels measured	Median likes
2-5	11,818	22
6-8	22,358	26
9-12	21,976	49
13-20	8,270	58
21+	3,315	60

A 13-to-20-slide carousel earns 2.6 times the engagement of a 2-to-5-slide one. Depth gets rewarded; teasers do not.

And the people who prove the ceiling:

The carousel masters: Tim Tebow, Alex Hormozi, Tony Robbins

Tim Tebow (2,869 median likes per carousel), Alex Hormozi (2,715, the frameworks-on-slides playbook) and Tony Robbins (1,716). Worth noting: two of the three are not "LinkedIn creators" at all. The format carries. (Full guide: how to create LinkedIn carousels.)

Video: the riser, with a sweet spot

33 median likes on 122,165 videos, and the only format whose median keeps climbing (20 → 38 since 2022). Duration matters, and not in the "shorter is better" way social folklore says:

Median likes by video duration: the 1-5 minute sweet spot

Duration	Videos measured	Median likes
Under 30s	28,643	26
30-59s	30,649	37
1-2 min	26,031	45
2-5 min	10,535	48
5 min+	4,924	30

The sweet spot is 1 to 5 minutes (45-48 median likes). Under 30 seconds underperforms the format's own median; past 5 minutes the audience checks out.

The video masters: Satya Nadella, Adam Grant, Andrew Ng

The video masters are a who's who: Satya Nadella (5,539 median likes per video), Adam Grant (5,315) and Andrew Ng (4,481). Video is where the platform's biggest voices over-invest, which is both a signal and a warning about competing there. (More craft in the LinkedIn video guide.)

Text only: the humbling number, and the writers who beat it

16 median likes, on 195,686 posts. Half the engagement of the same thought with an image attached, flat for four years, and abandoned by the feed (27.7% → 16.3% of posts). Length is doing real work here: longer, structured text outperforms short takes in every range we measured.

But text CAN win, and here is who proves it:

Text can win: Lex Fridman, Kunal Shah, Alex Hormozi

Lex Fridman earns 5,259 median likes on text-only posts, 329 times the format's median, on nothing but words. Kunal Shah (2,729) and Alex Hormozi (2,088) complete the podium. The format is not dead; mediocre text is.

Link posts: the double penalty

10 median likes and the worst creator reach: 414 median impressions versus 795 for posts without an attached link (567k posts with analytics). The oldest debate on LinkedIn has a data answer, and it is not subtle: attaching an external link roughly halves your reach. The feed noticed too: link posts went from 16.4% of the feed in 2022 to 6.1% today. We dedicated a full study to it, including the "link in first comment" workaround (publishing alongside this page).

Document: the forgotten carousel

18 median likes on 6,380 posts. PDFs uploaded without the carousel treatment: same mechanics, half the care, half the result. If you are exporting slides anyway, build them as a proper carousel.

Everything you need to grow on LinkedIn. In one place.

Write in your voice, find ideas, schedule, analyse, engage…
MagicPost is built exclusively for LinkedIn.

Try MagicPost

Naïlé Titah

CEO at MagicPost

LinkedIn ने अपना एल्गोरिदम फिर से बदल दिया है। और इस बार, यह ध्यान देने योग्य है।

मैं जानने के लिए अच्छी स्थिति में हूँ:

Everything you need to grow on LinkedIn. In one place.

Write in your voice, find ideas, schedule, analyse, engage…
MagicPost is built exclusively for LinkedIn.

Try MagicPost

Naïlé Titah

CEO at MagicPost

LinkedIn ने अपना एल्गोरिदम फिर से बदल दिया है। और इस बार, यह ध्यान देने योग्य है।

मैं जानने के लिए अच्छी स्थिति में हूँ:

Create your first LinkedIn post in under 5 minutes

With MagicPost, you save up to 4 hours a week, starting with your very first post. Spend less time writing and more time expanding your business.

Try MagicPost

No credit card required. No commitment. Just real-time savings.

100% free trial.

Poll: even the masters take the haircut

6 median likes, highest reach of any format (1,154 median impressions). Seen, not rewarded. And the strongest proof is at the top:

Even the poll masters take the haircut: Vaynerchuk, Huffington, Miller

Gary Vaynerchuk is the best poll performer we measured: 284 median likes per poll, against 645 on his posts overall. Arianna Huffington: 204 vs 360. Even the people polls work best for earn roughly half their normal engagement on them. If you need votes, a poll collects them efficiently. If you want an audience, it is the worst tool on this table.

Does the ranking hold for small accounts?

Yes. We re-ran the table inside each follower band (people only, 200+ posts minimum per cell). The order barely moves:

Format	Under 5k followers	5-50k	50k+
Image	15	41	225
Carousel	15	44	218
Video	11	27	166
Text only	7	21	113
Link / article	5	11	63
Poll	3	7	23

Whatever your size, the visual formats earn roughly double text, and link posts and polls trail badly. The ranking is a property of the platform, not of celebrity.

What this means for your posting mix

Default to image. It is the cheapest upgrade in this study: same text, twice the median.
Save carousels for depth, then actually go deep. 9 slides minimum; the data rewards 13-20.
Bet on video for the next years. The only format whose median keeps climbing, sweet spot 1 to 5 minutes.
Put links in the comments, not the post. The 414-versus-795 reach gap is the price of convenience.
Drop polls unless you genuinely need the votes; their own masters take a 50% haircut.
And whatever the format, when you post and how often still set the ceiling.

Put the findings to work. With MagicPost you can write, schedule and analyze all your LinkedIn content in one place, and the AI post generator already writes with these patterns in mind: right format, right length, no engagement-killing habits.

Where this data comes from

Everything on this page is MagicPost's own research. Core figures: 1,207,797 LinkedIn posts published over the last 12 months (reshares and deleted posts excluded), grouped by format, compared on median engagement. Reach figures come from the 567,082 posts with synced analytics, aggregated and anonymized. History: the same corpus from 2022 to mid-2026, medians within each year, directional by construction since the corpus grows. Format masters: minimum 10 posts in the format over 12 months (6 for polls, 20 for text), 5,000+ followers, people only. Medians, never averages. Figures dated June 2026, refreshed with the data.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best post format on LinkedIn in 2026?

By median engagement across 1.2 million posts: image and carousel posts tie at 34 median likes, video close behind at 33 and still climbing (its median nearly doubled since 2022). Text-only earns 16, link posts 10, polls 6.

Which LinkedIn format is growing fastest?

Video: 20 median likes in 2022 to 38 in 2026, the only format whose median keeps rising, while its share of the feed grew from 7% to 11%.

Do LinkedIn carousels still work in 2026?

Yes, better than their reputation: 34 median likes, the best creator-made reach (1,031 median impressions), and a strong depth effect: 13-20 slide carousels earn 58 median likes versus 22 for 2-5 slides. Their share of the feed peaked in 2024, but the engagement held.

How long should a LinkedIn video be?

1 to 5 minutes is the measured sweet spot (45-48 median likes). Videos under 30 seconds earn 26; past 5 minutes engagement drops to 30.

Do link posts get less reach on LinkedIn?

Yes: posts with an attached external link earn 414 median impressions versus 795 without, on 567k posts with analytics. Roughly half the reach. The feed learned it too: link posts fell from 16.4% of posts in 2022 to 6.1% in 2026.

Are LinkedIn polls worth it?

Only for collecting votes. Polls get the highest median reach of any format (1,154 impressions) and the lowest engagement (6 median likes), and even the best poll performer we measured (Gary Vaynerchuk, 284 median likes per poll) earns less than half his normal engagement on them.

Everything you need to grow on LinkedIn. In one place.

Write in your voice, find ideas, schedule, analyse, engage…
MagicPost is built exclusively for LinkedIn.

Try MagicPost

Naïlé Titah

CEO at MagicPost

LinkedIn ने अपना एल्गोरिदम फिर से बदल दिया है। और इस बार, यह ध्यान देने योग्य है।

मैं जानने के लिए अच्छी स्थिति में हूँ:

Everything you need to grow on LinkedIn. In one place.

Write in your voice, find ideas, schedule, analyse, engage…
MagicPost is built exclusively for LinkedIn.

Try MagicPost

Naïlé Titah

CEO at MagicPost

LinkedIn ने अपना एल्गोरिदम फिर से बदल दिया है। और इस बार, यह ध्यान देने योग्य है।

मैं जानने के लिए अच्छी स्थिति में हूँ:

Create your first LinkedIn post in under 5 minutes

With MagicPost, you save up to 4 hours a week, starting with your very first post. Spend less time writing and more time expanding your business.

Try MagicPost

No credit card required. No commitment. Just real-time savings.

100% free trial.

●

The full table

●

Reach is not engagement

●

Four years of formats: what changed

●

Format by format, with the people who master them

●

Image: the default for a reason

●

Carousel: the depth machine

●

Video: the riser, with a sweet spot

●

Text only: the humbling number, and the writers who beat it

●

Link posts: the double penalty

●

Document: the forgotten carousel

●

Poll: even the masters take the haircut

●

Does the ranking hold for small accounts?

●

What this means for your posting mix

●

Where this data comes from

●

Frequently Asked Questions

Master LinkedIn video in 2026: learn how to create, post, and optimize content that enhances reach, visibility, and engagement with proven strategies.

Last update: 5 Jun 2026

The Best LinkedIn Post Format in 2026 (We Measured 1.2 Million Posts)

The Best LinkedIn Post Format in 2026 (We Measured 1.2 Million Posts)

The Best LinkedIn Post Format in 2026 (We Measured 1.2 Million Posts)

The full table

Reach is not engagement

Four years of formats: what changed

Format by format, with the people who master them

Image: the default for a reason

Carousel: the depth machine

Video: the riser, with a sweet spot

Text only: the humbling number, and the writers who beat it

Link posts: the double penalty

Document: the forgotten carousel

Poll: even the masters take the haircut

Does the ranking hold for small accounts?

What this means for your posting mix

Where this data comes from

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best post format on LinkedIn in 2026?

Which LinkedIn format is growing fastest?

Do LinkedIn carousels still work in 2026?

How long should a LinkedIn video be?

Do link posts get less reach on LinkedIn?

Are LinkedIn polls worth it?

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