Beauty in 1H 2026: Skincare's lead, Amazon Premium's payoff, and Gen Z's cross-brand routine

The beauty market is now roughly $120 billion in annual sales, and the story of the first half of 2026 isn't that it grew. It's where the growth went. Skincare pulled further ahead of fragrance, TikTok Shop nearly doubled its share, and the brands gaining fastest were often the ones most people aren't talking about.

That was the starting point for our latest beauty webinar, where Chelsey Birgisdottir, Beauty Sector Lead at YipitData, and Kate Hofer, Insights Analyst, walked through 1H 2026 category, retailer, and brand performance, then went deep on two topics our beauty clients ask about most: whether Amazon's Premium Beauty program actually pays off, and how the Gen Z shopper is reshaping routines.

Worth noting: most of the insights and visuals in the session were generated with the help of YipitData’s Insight Agent.

Watch the full replay here.

Key takeaways:

• Skincare is the primary growth driver, up 17% year over year, ahead of hair and fragrance at ~10% and makeup and nail at 9% and 8%.
• Amazon and TikTok keep taking share. Amazon gained 3.6 percentage points year over year in 1H, and TikTok nearly doubled to ~2%. Sephora ceded more share than Ulta.
• Amazon Premium Beauty drives ~12% of Amazon beauty sales (~$3.7B annually) and consistently over-indexes on growth versus overall Amazon beauty.
• Makeup is where the Premium Beauty program pays off most. Tarte's share of Amazon makeup went from ~0.3% to more than 2% after joining; Milk's growth inflected within a month.
• Gen Z posted just over $5B in the latest twelve months, growing ~11%, with the highest spend and units per trip of any generation.
• Gen Z over-indexes at Sephora, Ulta, and TikTok Shop — and still over-indexes in store (113 index), not just online.

Skincare, not fragrance, is carrying the market

On a three-year CAGR basis, fragrance and skincare both post double-digit growth, with hair, bath and body, and makeup and nail in the single digits. But the recent view tells a different story than the headlines.

“Previously, fragrance was really the main focus in the beauty industry as the primary growth driver. And while that is true to an extent, we're actually seeing skincare emerge as the primary growth driver and continue to be the primary contributor.” — Chelsey Birgisdottir

We first flagged skincare overtaking fragrance in last year's 1H recap, and the trend has held well into 2026: skincare grew 17% year over year, versus ~10% for hair and fragrance. Amazon, TikTok, and K-beauty brands are doing most of the injecting.

Online is not just an Amazon and TikTok story

Across the trailing twelve months, Amazon moved from 25% to 29% of the market, and TikTok's bar has grown more prominent every quarter. Year to date, Amazon added 3.6 percentage points and TikTok nearly doubled its share to about 2%. Club held up better than most channels.

The more interesting split is between the two specialty retailers. Ulta ceded some share; Sephora absorbed more of the hit from Amazon and TikTok. In online growth specifically, Ulta's investment in its site and agentic experiences shows up as accelerating growth, while Sephora's online line stays close to flat in our data. Walmart is the other online standout, having pushed hard on memberships to keep purchases on its own site — consistent with what we've seen in its beauty strategy and in where beauty share is moving between Walmart and Amazon.

The breakout brand list has some names you'd expect, and some you wouldn't

In fragrance, share gains went mostly to legacy players launching new scents — Prada, YSL, Miu Miu, Dolce & Gabbana — plus accessible mass brands like Dossier and Bella Vita. Rare Beauty gained on the back of retail channel expansion.

Hair was led by Kitsch, which expanded from bar shampoo and conditioner into liquid wash care, followed by L'Oréal (Elvive) and Dr. Groot, which pushed into Costco and Sephora this year. Tools were a theme here too, with Tymo Beauty and Shark showing up in a space long dominated by Dyson — a dynamic we've tracked in hair styling tools share.

The name Chelsey found most interesting sat at the bottom of the list: Based, a men's haircare brand sold predominantly on Amazon with unusually high ratings. It's the kind of brand worth watching for a jump into brick-and-mortar.

In makeup, Tarte, Rhode, and Morphe led, with Danessa Myricks Beauty continuing to pop. But four of the top ten were nail brands — Curve Life, Beetles Gel Polish, Glamnetic, and Olive & June — pointing at DIY beauty and the at-home salon experience.

Skincare belonged to Medicube, and not narrowly.

“For the previous rankings, the number one spot was about a gain of half a percentage point. Medicube is growing three times more than the number one spots for the other categories.” — Chelsey Birgisdottir

K-beauty dominates the rest of that list, and tools appear again with Shark's red light face mask and cooling devices. For the fuller picture on emerging names, see our latest read on which beauty brands are breaking out right now.

Amazon Premium Beauty: ~12% of Amazon beauty, and growing faster than the rest

The question we hear constantly from brands is whether the Premium Beauty program is worth joining. The data gives a clearer answer than most expect.

Premium Beauty drives about 12% of Amazon's beauty sales, or roughly $3.7 billion annually across categories. More importantly, it consistently over-indexes on growth versus overall Amazon beauty — especially over the past seven months. Brands in the program are growing faster than brands that aren't.

By category, the picture is more nuanced. Fragrance has the highest Premium Beauty penetration at ~16% of Amazon fragrance, but makeup is where the incremental growth is most pronounced. In skincare, La Roche-Posay is the top Premium Beauty brand and ranks third overall on Amazon with ~42% growth, though not every brand over-indexes: Paula's Choice and Laneige sit slightly below their category. Haircare is strong across the board — Redken, Amika, MoroccanOil, Color Wow, Olaplex. Fragrance is mixed, with Sol de Janeiro plateauing as the body mist category saturates. And bath and body looks wide open: Native leads on deodorant, with no one close behind it.

Makeup was the standout, where all five top Premium Beauty brands — Tarte, Clinique, OPI, bareMinerals, Grande Cosmetics — over-indexed on growth. Two case studies make the point:

Tarte joined in April 2025. Its share of total Amazon makeup went from about 0.3 percentage points to more than 2 — close to a five-fold increase.

Milk joined in June 2025, and its trailing twelve-month growth inflected almost immediately after a stagnant May.

The open question is durability: whether that pace holds as these brands pass the twelve-month mark in the program. It's the kind of thing we track month to month in our beauty recaps and across Amazon's beauty events.

Gen Z is beauty's most valuable cohort, and it isn't only digital

Kate took the second half of the session on the shopper everyone calls beauty's future consumer. Gen Z posted just over $5 billion in the latest twelve months, growing about 11% — and that growth isn't coming from one lever. Gen Z posted the fastest growth in both buy rate and trips per buyer, meaning more shoppers are participating and existing shoppers are coming back more often. They also have the highest spend and units per trip of any generation, at about $22 per basket and roughly two units per trip. More than 72% bought from at least three beauty categories.

The retailer over-index was the session's biggest surprise.

“The answer is actually Sephora, which surprised me, knowing that Gen Z is such a digitally engaged and native cohort.” — Kate Hofer

Sephora and Ulta top the list, followed by TikTok Shop and Target. The common thread at the specialty retailers is discovery: trend-led assortments, product testing, knowledgeable staff, and in Ulta's case, the salon. Amazon and Walmart under-index with this group. And Gen Z still over-indexes in store versus online, at a 113 index — they may discover online, but they want to browse and test before they buy. That behavior shows up across our retail coverage, not just beauty.

Where Gen Z spends: expressive categories and finished routines

Fragrance and makeup and nail over-index most with Gen Z; skincare is on par and hair slightly under. Both leading categories are highly expressive — easy to experiment with a new aesthetic without rebuilding an entire routine.

One level deeper, the pattern is about completing a look. Six of the top fifteen over-indexing minor categories are makeup finishing and complexion products: contour, setting spray, bronzer, concealer, highlighter, blush. Gen Z attaches two or more of these 15% of the time, versus 10% for the market, with blush + concealer and concealer + setting spray as the top pairs. Lip liner and lip sets over-index too — a multi-step routine inside a single category. In fragrance, they're experimenting across formats: body sprays, solid perfume, perfume oil.

Brand-level, the winners combine identity with proof. Celebrity-led fragrance is a real force — Kylie Cosmetics, Sabrina Carpenter, Better World Fragrance House — but Snif and Noyz show that playful naming, modern packaging, and genderless scents work without a famous founder. Notably, very few luxury or designer fragrances make the Gen Z list. In makeup, Rhode and REFY win on recognizable aesthetics (skin-first and dewy versus clean-girl minimalism), alongside Saié, Tower 28 and Huda. In skincare, Lemme's gummies line is the top over-indexing brand — beauty and wellness blurring in real time — with Peach Slices, Good Molecules, Topicals, and Curology winning on ingredient education and clearly defined concerns. See our most powerful and virality-driven beauty brands coverage for more on how that momentum builds.

Four Gen Z behaviors shaping the next wave

• The finishing face. Complexion and finishing products beat eye-focused routines, and Gen Z bundles them — creating an opening to merchandise complete looks rather than standalone SKUs.
• Cross-brand skincare routines. Gen Z is the most routine-oriented cohort, with 41% bundling at least two skincare items. But they don't buy the full routine from one brand: Byoma, the highest, sees only 26% multi-product purchasing. They pick a favorite cleanser here, a favorite moisturizer there.
• The skinification of hair. Gen Z over-indexes in hair primers, scalp treatments, and masks. 66% of Gen Z hair treatment buyers also buy skincare treatments, versus 42% on average. It's not just prestige — Gisou and Living Proof sit alongside Eva NYC and Dove.
• Gen Z men are serious fragrance buyers. They over-index on fragrance at a 161 index, skew toward perfumes over mists, and spend more per product and per order than women. And unlike Gen Z fragrance shoppers overall, they gravitate to designer names like YSL and Valentino.

What it means for brands

Pull the threads together and 1H 2026 looks like a market where growth is concentrating — in skincare, in Amazon and TikTok, in a handful of brands with clear identity or clear efficacy — while the shopper who matters most is building longer, more interconnected routines across brands. The brands winning are the ones that can see all of it at the SKU level, unsuppressed, across every channel their consumers use.

That's the gap our beauty panel was built to close: over 12 million panelists versus an industry average closer to 200,000, panel-based rather than POS, so Sephora- and Ulta-exclusive brands aren't suppressed and the two channels aren't collapsed into one “specialty beauty” line.

Want to see how your brand stacks up with Gen Z — including where you over- or under-index against your category and the top ten over-indexing brands in your subcategory? Book a conversation with our beauty team.