The Kensington Palace account – for Meghan, Harry, Kate and Wills – now has 7.1million followers after losing hundreds of thousands in just 24 hours.
Users are speculating the bizarre sudden drop is part of Instagram's attempt to remove fake accounts and bots – but the social media giant claims it is just a glitch.
The Kensington Palace account allows royal fans to keep up with Prince Harry, Meghan, Kate and Prince William's official visits and news.
Despite the drop in followers, the most recent posts on the royal's Instagram gained nearly 180,000 likes on a picture of the Duchess of Cambridge wearing a glittering Gucci dress at a gala dinner at the V&A.
A post on their Instagram just three days ago reached over half a million likes and five thousand comments, showcasing the smitten couple William and Kate at the BAFTA Awards.
FAN OUTRAGE
Thousands of other Instagram users reported haemorrhaging followers overnight – with some popular profiles losing millions.
One Instagrammer Princeton Pereze said: "Anyone else lose hella followers on IG at once? I lost 32k in seconds…Instagram what's up with that."
Another user on Twitter wrote: "Does anyone know why I just lost 200 followers on Instagram?"
And one added: "Is there a day when @instagram isn't down?"
Some speculated that Instagram was "purging" fake accounts, as it has done in the past.
These purges remove large numbers of fraudulent profiles – often used to spam messages, or bulk out follower counts – and are in breach of Instagram's rules.
It comes after Instagram boss Adam Mosseri was forced to apologise for failing to properly monitor "self-harm and suicide" images.
He spoke out after the suicide of a 14-year-old British schoolgirl was blamed on Instagram – which is seen by some as a safe haven for posts that encourage harmful behaviour.
Speaking last week, Mr Mosseri said: "The bottom line is we do not yet find enough of these images before they're seen by other people.
"We have put in place measures to stop recommending related images, hashtags, accounts, and typeahead suggestions."
A spokesman said: "We're aware of an issue causing a change in account follower numbers for some people right now."
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