Facebook and Instagram suffer global outage on 12 June 2026; tens of thousands unable to log in
A massive outage hit Meta's Facebook and Instagram on Friday afternoon, 12 June 2026, leaving tens of thousands of users worldwide unable to access their accounts, with error messages and blank screens reported across multiple continents.
A widespread technical failure brought down Meta's flagship platforms on Friday, 12 June 2026, with users from Romania to New Zealand reporting that Facebook and Instagram were entirely inaccessible. Reports began surging around 16:35 Romania time (EEST), and within minutes monitoring services like Downdetector logged a near-vertical spike in complaints.
Scale and geographic reach
Outage maps showed the disruption hitting every continent. Users in Romania, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Bulgaria, Poland, the United Arab Emirates, India, Australia and New Zealand all described blank screens, inability to load the news feed, and automatic logouts. In many cases, the error message "Session expired" appeared, and people were logged out without the possibility of reconnecting.
Impact on connected services
The outage was not limited to the main Facebook app. Instagram users reported difficulties sending messages and loading media content. Conflicting signals emerged about other Meta properties: some monitoring data pointed to problems with Messenger, WhatsApp and Threads, while other sources indicated that WhatsApp continued to function normally. Outside the Meta ecosystem, users also flagged temporary issues on X (Twitter) and TikTok, although the primary disruption remained within Meta's suite.
Recent outage history
Friday's collapse follows an earlier Facebook outage on 3 June 2026, which lasted approximately 45 minutes, and a notable disruption in March 2026 that saw over 11,000 reports at its peak. The new incident intensifies a pattern of reliability concerns for the social media giant.
- Facebook outage lasting approximately 45 minutes, according to reports.
- Facebook and Instagram global outage, starting around 16:35 EEST, affecting tens of thousands of users.
Meta's silence and user guidance
By the time of the last press reports, Meta had issued no public explanation for the outage. The company's business status page did not initially reflect the full scale of the problem, a gap frequently observed during fast-moving incidents. Independent specialists advised users not to repeatedly change their passwords or delete the applications, stressing that the fault lay with Meta's central servers, not with individual devices or accounts.
