Instagram 90-minute videos (Features) review 2026: honest verdict on the long-form horizontal format — reach, the Reels funnel, and the monetization gap.
Features is a credible new home for long-form on Instagram: horizontal video up to 90 minutes, a one-tap Reels-to-full-video funnel, Explore recommendations, and a path onto Instagram's TV apps. For a creator already making podcasts, interviews, or vlogs, that funnel is the genuinely interesting part. The catches are large and honest: it is an invite-only test limited to hand-picked creators, there is no ad-revenue share the way YouTube pays, and Instagram already killed a long-form format once (IGTV, shut down in 2022). Score it a promising distribution surface you should feed if you can get in — not a format to rebuild your content business around yet.
On October 26, 2026, Instagram head Adam Mosseri and product lead Tessa Lyons announced a test of "Features" — long-form, horizontal (widescreen) video of up to 90 minutes, aimed at podcasts, interviews, vlogs, and comedy. It is the platform's second serious run at long-form after IGTV, and the framing is explicitly YouTube-shaped: a place for the full episode, with Reels acting as the trailer that funnels viewers in. This review scores Features as a creator-facing thing — is it worth chasing, who does it help, and where does it mislead.
Disclosure upfront: I run Kompozy, a content generation and publishing engine, and Kompozy does not compete with a platform format — it does not host your videos or decide your Instagram reach, so I have no reason to talk Features up or down. The honest read is mixed. The distribution idea is good and the Reels-to-Features funnel is the smartest part of it; the problems are that it is an early, invite-only test, it has no settled way to pay creators, and its predecessor is dead.
Two things frame the 2.7. First, Features is a real opportunity for the right creator: if you already produce long-form and have an Instagram short-form audience, a one-tap path from a clip to the full video is leverage you did not have. Second, almost everything about the offer is unsettled — access is gated to creators Meta has individually selected, the length limits are still being tested (reporting cites up to 90 minutes), and the money is an open question Mosseri himself has said they are "exploring." Scores below treat Features as an early test, not a finished, broadly available product, and generalize where the spec or economics are not yet fixed.
Features is Instagram's long-form video format: horizontal, widescreen clips reported to run up to 90 minutes, versus the short, vertical content Reels is built for. It is positioned for formats that do not fit a Reel — full podcast episodes, interviews, vlogs, and comedy sets. Crucially, it is wired to Reels rather than walled off from them: a Reel can link directly to the full Feature, so a creator uses short clips as discovery and sends interested viewers one tap into the long video, and Instagram plans to surface Features through Explore as well. The videos play inside the Instagram app and are also meant to push viewers toward Instagram's dedicated TV apps for living-room viewing. As of the announcement it is an early, limited test. Instagram first trialed the format with creators in Brazil and is expanding to a US test that The Hollywood Reporter reports is reaching tens of thousands of US creators, with access limited to creators Meta has individually selected for the test rather than an open rollout. There is no announced timeline for general availability. The hardest open question is money: unlike YouTube's long-standing ad-revenue share, Instagram has not committed to paying Features creators a share of ad revenue. It has said it is funding some creators directly to produce longer videos — one-time creator bonuses reported, secondhand and unconfirmed, as ranging into the hundreds of thousands of dollars — and that it would help creators find brand partners, while Mosseri has publicly said the economics "matter a ton" and that Meta is exploring options. Treat the pay model as unresolved.
Features fits creators who already make long-form video and already have a short-form Instagram audience to funnel from — podcasters, interviewers, vloggers, and comedians sitting on full episodes they currently only clip for Reels or host on YouTube. For them, the Reels-to-Features path is a reason to try it, and an invite is worth taking. It is a weaker fit for anyone who does not already produce long-form, since the format demands a 90-minute-scale asset it does nothing to help you make, and for creators who need to know their revenue before they invest, because the pay model is unsettled and there is no ad share today. It is also, by definition, Instagram-only: it says nothing about the reach or income you earn on YouTube, TikTok, or anywhere else, so a creator whose long-form already lives on a monetized platform should weigh Features as an additive discovery channel, not a replacement.
| Dimension | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Format fit for long-form (horizontal, 90 min) | 3.9 / 5 | A true widescreen, feature-length container is the right shape for podcasts, interviews, and vlogs that never fit a vertical Reel. |
| Reels-to-Features discovery funnel | 3.6 / 5 | Linking a Reel straight to the full video is the smartest part of the design — short clips do the discovery, the Feature holds the watch time. |
| Reach / audience-building potential | 3.0 / 5 | Explore recommendations plus the Reels funnel give real upside, but it is unproven and depends on Instagram actually distributing long-form. |
| TV / living-room reach | 3.1 / 5 | Routing Features toward Instagram's TV apps opens a screen Reels never owned, though the TV apps are themselves early. |
| Creator monetization | 1.8 / 5 | No committed ad-revenue share versus YouTube's established split; pay is direct, selective, and unsettled — the weakest part of the offer today. |
| Access & availability | 2.0 / 5 | An invite-only test limited to hand-picked creators; most creators cannot opt in, and there is no general-availability date. |
| Platform durability / commitment | 2.4 / 5 | Meta says it is committed long-term, but Instagram shut down IGTV in 2022 after a similar long-form push — the precedent earns caution. |
| Production & repurposing support | 1.8 / 5 | The format gives you a destination, not a way to make the 90-minute video or the clips that feed it — all of that is on you. |
| Cross-platform usefulness | 1.5 / 5 | By design it is Instagram-only and says nothing about reach or revenue on YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, or email. |
Features itself has no price to post — it is a native Instagram format, and uploading to it costs nothing. But "free to post" is the wrong frame, because the economic story that matters here is the reverse of a normal tool review: the question is not what you pay Instagram, it is whether Instagram pays you. On that, Features is currently the weak option in the long-form market. YouTube has a mature, published ad-revenue share for long-form; Instagram has committed to no equivalent, funds a selective set of test creators directly, and points to brand partnerships as the near-term path. Reported one-time bonuses into the hundreds of thousands of dollars are secondhand and unconfirmed, and in any case reach only a hand-picked few. For most creators the realistic 2026 revenue from Features is whatever brand or audience value they can build on top of it, not a platform payout.
That makes the real cost of Features a production cost. A feature-length video plus the short clips to funnel discovery into it is a substantial content operation, and the format supplies none of it. You are investing time and production against a distribution surface that is promising but unproven and, for now, largely unpaid.
Measured against that, a content engine is a different line item solving a different problem. Kompozy runs $199/mo (Starter) to $499/mo (Pro) and does the production-and-distribution work Features leaves entirely to you — turning one long recording into a batch of on-brand clips, carousels, and posts, and publishing them across platforms. It does not make Features pay better; it makes the content that feeds a Features strategy, and it hedges the strategy by putting the same material everywhere Features can't reach. If you can get into the test and already produce long-form, Features is a free channel worth feeding. If the bottleneck is producing and distributing the content around it, a free format does not address that.
| Use case | Fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting a full podcast or interview episode on Instagram | Strong | A horizontal, feature-length container is exactly the shape long-form episodes need, and keeps the audience inside the app. |
| Funneling a short-form audience into long-form | Strong | A Reel linking one tap to the full Feature is strong discovery-to-depth design for creators who already have Reels reach. |
| Reaching the living room via Instagram's TV apps | OK | Features routes toward the TV apps, opening a new screen, though those apps are themselves early and unproven. |
| Earning reliable revenue from long-form video | Weak | There is no committed ad-revenue share; pay is selective, direct, and unsettled, unlike YouTube's established split. |
| Getting access as an ordinary creator today | Weak | The test is invite-only and hand-picked by Meta, so most creators simply cannot opt in yet. |
| Building a long-form strategy you can rely on long-term | Weak | IGTV's 2022 shutdown is a real precedent; betting a business on an early test carries platform-risk. |
| Producing the long-form video and its feeder clips | Weak | Features is a destination, not a production tool — it makes neither the 90-minute video nor the Reels that drive it. |
| Reaching audiences beyond Instagram | Weak | The format is Instagram-only and does nothing for your reach or revenue on any other platform. |
If the job is landing long-form on Instagram, Features is the format to watch, and Kompozy does not compete with it — Kompozy is not a video host and does not decide your reach. The two meet on a different question: a format gives you somewhere to put a video; it does not make the 90-minute episode, cut the clips that funnel discovery into it, or put the same material anywhere Features cannot go. That production-and-distribution job is where Kompozy sits, alongside a Features strategy rather than against it.
The fit is unusually concrete because Features runs on a pipeline Kompozy is built to feed. You record the long piece once; Kompozy's [Clipped Shorts](/glossary/clipped-short) path cuts it into captioned verticals with automatic 16:9-to-9:16 [reframing](/glossary/content-repurposing) and speaker tracking, so the horizontal Feature and the vertical Reels that link to it come from one source instead of two edits. From the same recording it also generates brand-exact [Carousel Posts](/glossary/hyperframes), quote graphics, text posts, and a blog write-up, every asset held to one voice by the [Persona Brief](/glossary/persona-brief) and published across the eight social platforms plus blog and email from one queue on [Autopilot](/glossary/autopilot) or through a review gate. Chase the Features invite if long-form on Instagram fits your audience. Use Kompozy to produce the episode's clips and companion posts, and to keep the same content earning reach on YouTube, TikTok, and everywhere the Instagram-only funnel can't see — which is also the honest hedge against an unpaid test that Instagram has shut down once before.
They are "Features," a long-form, horizontal (widescreen) video format Instagram announced on October 26, 2026, supporting videos reported to run up to 90 minutes — aimed at podcasts, interviews, vlogs, and comedy, versus the short vertical content Reels is built for. It is an early, invite-only test, not a finished, broadly available product.
Not through an ad-revenue share like YouTube, at least not yet. Instagram is funding a selective set of test creators directly and says it will help creators find brand partners, and reported one-time bonuses into the hundreds of thousands of dollars are secondhand and unconfirmed. Mosseri has said the economics "matter a ton" and that Meta is exploring options, so treat the pay model as unsettled.
Reels are short, vertical clips; Features are long, horizontal videos up to roughly 90 minutes. They are designed to work together — a Reel can link directly to the full Feature, so clips drive discovery and the Feature holds the longer watch time. Instagram also plans to recommend Features through Explore and route them to its TV apps.
Not during the test. Access runs through Meta's own selection of test creators, starting in Brazil and expanding to a US test The Hollywood Reporter reports reaches tens of thousands of US creators. There is no announced date for general availability, so most creators cannot opt in yet.
It depends on your position. If you already produce long-form and have a short-form Instagram audience, the Reels-to-Features funnel is a real opportunity worth testing if you can get in. If you need settled revenue or broad access, the unsettled pay model, invite-only gating, and the IGTV precedent (Instagram shut down its last long-form format in 2022) argue for treating it as an additive channel, not a foundation.
Not wholesale. YouTube has an established ad-revenue share; Features does not, and it is an early test. The lower-risk play is to keep long-form where it already earns and treat Features as an extra discovery surface — publish to both, and use a tool that repurposes one recording into clips and posts for every platform so you are not betting on a single format.
You record the long piece once and cut vertical clips from it to drive discovery, since a Reel can link to the full Feature. A content engine like Kompozy automates that: it clips the long recording into captioned verticals with automatic horizontal-to-vertical reframing and speaker tracking, generates companion carousels, quote cards, and text posts from the same source in one brand voice, and publishes them across the eight social platforms plus blog and email.
See Instagram 90-minute videos ("Features" long-form format) vs Kompozy comparison → · Get Started →