No. Instagram “Follow Requests” do not expire. Once you press the follow button, your request will remain in their “Follow Requests” section until they decide to respond to it.
At this stage, they have three options:
- They can Confirm your request.
- They can Delete it.
- Or they can simply leave it sitting there.
At no stage will the Instagram app “expire” or automatically remove the request. In other words, it requires manual intervention.
A screenshot of the Follow Requests section on Instagram. In this case, you can see that there are four pending requests.
Some of the requests above have been “pending” for over two years. This is because I simply chose to ignore them.
Did they delete my Follow Request?
When you request to follow someone on Instagram, the app displays a white “Requested” button underneath their profile:
If this “Requested” button suddenly changes back to the blue “Following” button, then it means that they have deleted it.
Did they cancel their Follow Request?
If you’re wondering why a request has suddenly disappeared from your list, then it can only mean one of the following:
- They have deactivated their Instagram account.
- They deleted their old Instagram account and started a new one. This is actually pretty common, as some people like to wipe everything and start afresh.
- It dawned on them that you were ignoring their follow request. As a result, they decided to cancel it. They may have discovered this after they viewed your Instagram profile and saw that the white “Requested” button was still showing. Bummer…
In conclusion: No, they don’t expire. Instead, the request will sit there indefinitely until someone decides to act on it.
Hopefully, this guide helped to clear a few things up for you! If you have any further questions or insights to add to this topic, feel free to post them in the comments section below.