Instagram Celebrates Lunar New Year with New Stickers and AR Lenses

As the whole world follows China and other Asian countries in celebrating Lunar New Year, Instagram supports it with new features. The celebration lasts until February 15, so you can still participate in it, both in real life and on your social media pages. On Instagram, it will be more fun with special lenses and stickers commemorating the event.

The most noticeable element of these is a set of themed stickers that appear on top of the sticker list when you want to add one. On these stickers drawn by Hong Kong artist Ophelia Pang, you can see tigers and 2022 symbolics in Chinese style. The three stickers she designed can be viewed in detail on her Instagram post where she describes her tigers as “courageous but celebratory”. The collaboration with Ophelia Pang, though, caused controversy; many comments under Adam Mosseri’s tweet pointed out that the artist supported police brutality in Hong Kong during the protests. The stickers, though, are unlikely to be canceled.

Along with these stickers, Instagram adds a special AR effect named #MyLNY2022. With it, your face starts to shine, and the tiger appears on the screen. This effect can be found within the app among others.

Indeed, Instagram still has lots of stickers and effects that were created to celebrate the Lunar New Year before 2022. Some of them were introduced by Instagram, and some by third-party creators. Many of them can still be found with built-in search. Instagram encourages authors to create more content for it, not only in the shape of posts, but as filters and stickers as well, so others can use them and celebrate the events.

Are you celebrating Lunar New Year? If so, how do you do it? Have you used the filters and the stickers on Instagram for that? Let’s share our opinions in our comments and greet each other here too!