Bluesky recorded its highest daily activity of 2026 on Tuesday, the US midterm election day, according to TechCrunch, which reported the figures on November 5, 2026. Citing open-source data, the article gives these totals: 44 million likes, 4.8 million posts and 2 million new follows. It does not report new account signups.

Figures from the company

  • COO Rose Wang told TechCrunch daily posts rose 30% and likes rose 70% compared with previous 30-day averages, and link clicks rose 20%.
  • CEO Toni Schneider said posts and likes “doubled” on Tuesday. TechCrunch notes this uses a different baseline than Wang’s percentages and does not reconcile the two.
  • Data traffic was about 200% above normal, peaking at 35.8 GB/s, and usage peaked between 8 and 10 p.m. PT, as many election results came in, per the article.

Compared with earlier peaks

The total of 44 million likes nearly matched Bluesky’s all-time single-day record of 45 million, set in November 2024. The article gives no comparable figures for posts, follows or signups.

Reasons given

TechCrunch attributes the surge to election results arriving on election night. It notes that Bluesky’s user base skews left politically, and that the platform’s most concentrated period of user growth followed Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential win. Schneider credited a wave of new and returning users, writing in a Bluesky post: “We’re seeing a wave of new people joining and old friends coming back.”

Sources and notes

This post is based on TechCrunch’s In Brief report by Amanda Silberling (7:44 a.m. PST, November 5, 2026). The article calls Tuesday election day yet lists the open-source totals under November 4; Lens has not reconciled the two dates, which may reflect different time zones. TechCrunch does not name the open-source data source, and Lens did not check the figures independently.

Image: a blue morpho butterfly resting on green leaves at Papiliorama in Kerzers, Switzerland, by GabrielleMerk via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; cropped. Stand-in photo; it is not related to Bluesky and does not show the events described.