The global beauty industry grew 8% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, according to data from NielsenIQ’s “Beauty E-commerce 2026: The New Rules of Growth” webinar. The overall number matters less than where it came from. In every region, e-commerce growth outpaced brick-and-mortar by a wide margin. Online sales in the Middle East and Africa jumped 51% over the period, against 14% offline. Asia is the starkest case: the offline market contracted 1% while online grew 13%. North America and Western Europe grew offline at the same 3% rate, but online growth was 20% in North America against just 6% in Europe as European digital adoption still lags compared to other regions.
PwC projects that 25% of global beauty sales will happen online in 2026, making e-commerce the category’s single largest channel, ahead of specialty stores at 20%.
Two players have been notably driving this shift. Amazon is now the top beauty retailer in the United States and ranks first in eight of ten European countries, according to NielsenIQ. Then there is TikTok which went from a discovery channel to the fastest-growing retailer of all time: since launching in April 2021, it has generated $10.2 billion in global beauty sales, $2.7 billion of it in the US, per Charm.io. In Thailand and Malaysia, close to a quarter of all beauty sales now run through TikTok Shop. In Vietnam, half of all beauty transactions do.