Nielsen’s 2026 ranking of top online beauty merchants in Western Europe, based on a consumer panel through the end of April, confirms one trend from last year and introduces a new one.
Amazon is now first in eight out of ten countries, up from seven last year, after overtaking Bol. in Belgium. It also now appears at number five in Switzerland, where it has no direct presence, with purchases being made cross-border from other European countries.
Part of Amazon lead is coming from the breadth of its offer. Amazon’s third-party marketplace gives shoppers access to niche and emerging brands that prestige retailers like Sephora don’t carry like Korean brand Medicube which was the number three top selling skincare brand on Amazon in Q1 2026 according to data from Pattern. Moreover, while Amazon was initially lacking on the prestige front it has been closing that gap carrying brands such as Clinique, Lancôme and La Roche-Posay across the UK, Germany, France and Italy. Interestingly, even if Amazon is already the dominant player it has still room to grow, being the top growing retailer in three countries out of ten. Marketplaces already capture around one euro in five spent on beauty across Europe, with a 34 percent share in the UK and 32 percent in Italy, according to the retail newsletter Market Maze, which gives a sense of how much room Amazon still has to grow.
But the bigger story this year is the rise of TikTok Shop whose growth rests on a format that converts content into transaction. Last year TikTok Shop appeared in only one country’s top five, the UK, at number three. It is now number two there, has entered the top five in Germany and Italy, reached number four in Ireland, and is the fastest-growing retailer in half of the countries in the ranking.
More than 100,000 European businesses have joined TikTok Shop across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Ireland, with daily gross merchandise value up by triple digits between August 2025 and February 2026 according to TikTok’s own published data. Beauty is doing more than its share of that growth with TikTok already generating $523m in the UK (launched in September 2021), $42m in Germany (launched in March 2025) and $27m in France (launched in March 2025) according to data from Charm.io.
Ultimately both Amazon and TikTok Shop are eating into territory beauty specialists used to consider their own and the question is how those players will adapt. Will we see more beauty retailers launching on TikTok like Ulta Beauty did in the US?