We consider the nonlinear Schrödinger equation with a general nonlinearity. In dimension higher than 2, this equation admits travelling wave solutions with a fixed profile which is not the ground state. This kind of profiles are called excited states. In this paper, we construct solutions to NLS behaving like a sum of N excited states which spread up quickly as time grows (which we call multi-solitons). We also show that if the flow around one of these excited states is linearly unstable, then the multi-soliton is not unique, and is unstable (asymptotically and orbitally).