How to create a seamless Instagram 9-grid (2025 Tall Grid)

If your once-beautiful 9-grid now looks like a chaotic mess thanks to Instagram’s new tall profile grid, you’re in the right place. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how you can create a seamless Instagram 9-grid or puzzle grid even after the 2025 profile grid update.

So Instagram introduced a new tall profile grid, but the dimensions are not the exact same as tall posts. This makes it a lot harder to make a seamless puzzle grid. You *could* design for this by only having seamless pieces vertically, not horizontally. But if you’re anything like me, you want a seamless puzzle grid that goes both vertically and horizontally.

So yes, it’s a little harder, but it’s still possible, and I will show you how.

And keep reading, because I’ve got something that will make designing yours easier.

I’ve had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Instagram, and with the new tall profile grid, I’ve decided it’s time to create a new 9-grid for myself. So, first things first, before I start designing, I need to decide what’s going in it and write my captions for the nine posts.

My 9-grid strategy

I’m going to mostly reuse the structure and captions from a previous 9-grid I had. So here’s the structure for my 9-grid:

1. About me and what I do.
2. My why or mission.
3. Promote a freebie. You might like: Step-by-step guide to lead magnets.
4. Educational post related to a digital product. You might like: How to create your first digital product.
5. Directly promote that digital product.
6. Testimonials for that digital product. You might like: Where & how to use testimonials.
7. FAQ for that digital product.
8. Testimonials for my 1-on-1 packages
9. Directly promote my 1-on-1 packages.

Designing your 9-grid in Canva

So now that I have that structure, I will start designing in Canva.

Although the official size for Instagram tall posts is 1080 pixels by 1350 pixels, the visible part on the profile grid is actually a smaller width. I’ve seen both 1012 and 1015 pixels wide float around. I tested it, and in my tests, I got the best results with 1015 pixels wide. And since it’s 9 posts, it will be 3045 pixels wide and 4050 pixels high. And I’ll share how I turn it into the correct size for the tall posts in a little bit.

So first, I’m going to create a new design with a width of 3045 pixels and a height of 4050 pixels.

The first thing I want to do is to add a grid. So I’m going to File > Settings > Add guides, and then I’m going to Custom and select 3 columns and 3 rows with no gap, and click Add guides.

Now we’ve got a good view of what the separate posts will be. I’ve added some text to guide myself on what needs to go in each block, and now I will start designing it.

You can click Elements to start adding different elements to your design, and Text to add text, and so on.

If you don’t want to start from scratch, you can get this template for free:

Using Canva’s Image Splitter

So after you finish your design, you’re going to Apps in the sidebar. And in the apps, we’re going to look for the Canva app Image Splitter. And then we’re going to choose this one:

Before we split the image, we need to export our current design.

We click the Export Design button, selecting PNG. Leave the size as is and export. Now it has saved our image.

We want to split it into 3 rows and 3 columns, and then we can just click Split Image.

And now it has split our images into 9 different images here. So we’re going to save these images to our Uploads folder. Save images to uploads. As you can see, the split image size is 1015 by 1350, and the next part is how we’re going to make it the correct size for tall posts on Instagram. And as you can see, the images have now been saved to the Canva uploads folder.

Adjustments for Instagram tall posts

So now we can go to File > Create a new design, and then we can create the Instagram tall posts, which is 1080 by 1350.

Then in your new design, click Uploads, add all split images to your design and resize them to the correct height and then position them in the center of each page.

So this would work, but you can see now that there’s white space on the side of each image, and I don’t like that, so I’m going to fix that.

On the first and last image of each row (so images 1, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 9), you will need to use the same background color as the image, and then we just copy the second image, paste it in, and drag it all the way off to the side. Then I’m just going to nudge it a little bit to make sure that it connects correctly. And I’m going to copy the first image, paste it on the second page, give it a little nudge, and copy the third page to the second page. And so on.

So it takes a little bit of work, but now the images are looking complete, and the middle part of each image is designed to fit together when it’s shown on the profile grid.

Now we can download the images to post them to Instagram. Click Share, and then you can either choose Download, or click See All and post directly to Instagram from Canva. I prefer to download the images and post them manually to Instagram. I’m going to click Download, select the file type. I prefer to set it to two times the size, so that it’s a little bit clearer and has a little bit sharper edges. Select All pages, click Download, and then save it to your computer, somewhere you can find it again.

Uploading & posting your 9-grid to Instagram

On Instagram, click Create, and Create Post.

You need to post these from back to front. So, image 9 first, and make sure when it says to crop, you change it to 4:5 or Original. Then I’m just going to copy and paste my captions for each post and hit Share, and repeat this process for all 9 posts.

As you can see below, I posted all 9 posts, and they fit together seamlessly.