8 trends shaping future skin care NPD

Skin care is a big deal in the beauty and personal care industry and has long been the category that drives the most disruption and innovation.
It also generates a healthy amount of revenue. According to Statista, the global Skin Care market total sales amount to around €179.30bn in 2025, while the market is expected to grow annually by 3.59% between now and 2029.
To discover what’s coming next for this key category, we will be broadcasting a series of videos on this topic on 30th January at 11am CET (10am GMT/ 6pm SST), which will also be available on-demand to watch afterwards.
In this hour-long broadcast, we will talk to a host of experts in the skin care space to get an in-depth look at what’s set to influence the way we formulate skin care in the future and discover what is likely to happen next. Sign up to watch it here.
Ahead of this, we’ve outlined some of the recent trends and events that are impacting the future landscape for skin care brands.
A tech-based focus for formulating
In recent years, a host of beauty companies have been experimenting with AI-based formulating. It’s been especially prevalent in the fragrance industry, and it looks set to gain momentum in other categories too.
Last week, L’Oréal announced a partnership with IBM and plans to develop a custom AI foundation model that will help its R&D teams reach new levels of innovation in every cosmetic category. Foundation models are a type of AI model trained on a broad set of unlabelled data that can perform tasks and apply information from one situation to another.
IBM noted that these models “have significantly advanced the field of natural language processing (NLP) technology over the past several years” and said that it’s now pioneering this beyond language, into areas such as chemistry, time series and geospatial modalities.
L’Oréal believed the approach to formulation would “redefine AI innovation at the intersection of beauty, chemistry and technology” and also highlighted that the move would help it meet its sustainability target of sourcing most of its product formulas based on bio-sourced materials and/or the circular economy by 2030.

More crossover for aesthetic medicine and derma-beauty
Doctor-based brands have been where it’s at for the past few years and this crossover is set to blossom even further, as the lines continue to blur between cosmetics and dermatology and aesthetic medicine.
According to Mintel Consultant Vivienne Rudd this cross-influence from the aesthetics sector is also having an impact on the beauty industry. “The recent deal between L’Oréal and Galderma is a case in point. The two companies have competing dermo cosmetics brands, but it’s Galderma’s expertise in injectables that is fuelling the new partnership and will result in new solutions for L’Oréal’s topical products,” she said.
Within this space, Shiseido has just developed its ‘next-gen microneedle design’, further bridging the gap between aesthetic treatments and cosmetics.
Meanwhile, the increased use of semaglutide drugs for weight loss is also creating a wealth of new opportunities across the beauty, aesthetics and wellness categories – with a big focus on skin care-based solutions to a new but growing issue: ‘Ozempic face.’
As extreme weight loss in a short period of time puts strain on the body, this can potentially cause loss of skin elasticity, disruption of the skin barrier and rapid loss of essential fatty acids, ageing the facial appearance of the user. This offers potential for many new opportunities for skin care brands.

A focus on longevity (and not ‘anti-ageing’)
Following on from this crossover of skin care and medicine, the anti-ageing skin care sector is now taking a bigger picture view and focusing on ‘longevity’.
According to Professor Osvaldas Rukšėnas, who is a neuroscientist affiliated with the Life Sciences Centre of Vilnius University, the cosmetics sector has “a very bright future” against the backdrop of the – now mainstreaming – longevity trend.
Professor Rukšėnas noted how the population is very steeply increasing, that we are living longer and longer, yet living longer doesn’t mean living happier. He also highlighted that it’s in people’s nature to want to look nice. “Mathematically there are more consumers who are living longer and will need services for longer, so we will need more cosmetics in the long run,” he stated.
In January 2024, L’Oréal’s venture capital fund BOLD acquired a Swiss biotech startup called Timeline, which has developed a proprietary molecule that it said: “can recycle and rejuvenate mitochondria: the powerhouses of cells that tend to malfunction with age.”
While in September 2024, Beiersdorf’s Eucerin brand launched its new Hyaluronic Filler Epigenetic Serum, which contained a special epigenetics active Epicelline, which it claims “reactivates youth genes to reverse signs of ageing.
LVMH Beauty’s R&D Division LVMH Recherche has formed a strategic research partnership with US-based biotech company Integrated Biosciences to “discover novel chemical entities that target ageing at the molecular level.”
Integrated Biosciences pioneers the use of synthetic biology and machine learning to “develop next-generation therapeutics for age-related diseases.” Using its combination of proprietary AI and optogenetics platforms, Integrated Biosciences said it “can train state-of-the-art deep learning models to virtually screen hundreds of thousands of molecules, identifying the most promising first-in-class chemical compounds that potently modulate age-related biological phenotypes.”
Another beauty brand that has been in a trailblazer in this category is the Swiss skin care company Niance. Its COO Yvette Ye is set to join our Future Skin Care Innovation webinar to discuss the topic in more detail.
AI drives consumer personalisation
As more scientific studies reveal how unique we really are, this opens the floor for more personalised skin care products that are tailored to the person using them.
In recent years, tech companies like Haut AI have been innovating in this space. Its SkinGPT tool gives brands scientifically accurate, data-driven simulations to validate claims and improve personalisation strategies.
At CES 2025 in January 2025 in Las Vegas, L’Oréal unveiled its new skin age predictor Cell BioPrint, which was developed in collaboration with Korean startup Nano EnTech. The tabletop hardware device can provide personalised skin analysis in five minutes, using advanced proteomics, which is the study of how protein composition in the human body affects skin ageing.
“This is another interesting area,” said Rudd, speaking about tech-driven personalisation. “There is so much work going on with RNA and microbiome analysis that the possibilities are truly exciting. However, by its very definition, hyper-personalisation cannot be replicated at scale, it is necessarily an individualised approach.” At this stage, Rudd said that this “will probably be limited to wealthier consumers.”
One example of how a brand is using tech for personalisation is Unilever’s Pond’s Skin Institute Microbiome Analyser, which was piloting skin microbiome testing at Watsons stores in the Philippines.
The test takes a skin swab to analyse a range of data points and produce a list of recommended products within an hour, to help give a tailor-made regime. And we will be speaking to Unilever’s Chief R&D Officer for Beauty and Wellbeing Jason Harcup about this and more in our Future Skin Care Innovation special.
On the topic of tech-driven personalisation, Rudd concluded that: “In the longer term, however, personalised analysis will move into the home, where it will become brand-agnostic” and that going forward “the challenge for brands is how to become part of this process.”
The ‘inside-out’ approach to skin
The skin microbiome and the gut-skin-brain axis are also spaces to watch for future innovation. In fact, ‘beauty-from-within’ (ingestible beauty products) in general look set to impact the skin care category in upcoming years.
New research published in November 2024 in the European Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology, provided a full overview of the lifestyle and environmental factors that contribute to a healthy skin microbiome and how this impacts the host. This serves to highlight the presence and importance of the skin microbiome, particularly for future skin care R&D.
Dr Chris Callewaert, a senior post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Microbial Ecology and Technology at Ghent University and one of the co-authors of the study, noted that the skin microbiome “has a crucial function for human health.”
“When creating a face cream, deodorant, sunscreen, skin moisturiser, shampoo, eczema product, it is important to take into account the skin microbiome and their potential modulation. By all means, the skin microbiome cannot be modulated to enrich the pathogens,” he explained.
‘Sugar-proofing’ skin
While some consumers may be trying out weight-loss drugs in a bid to remove sweet treats from their diets, there will also be some people that have no interest at all in quitting sugar and instead will seek out ways to avoid or lessen the skin-related issues associated with eating too much sugar.
German beauty multinational Beiersdorf first innovated in this space in 2024 when it created Nivea Q10 Dual Action Serum, which targets sugar-induced skin ageing to address “sugar damage”.
Now Incospharm’s latest anti-aging active claims to reverse glycation by activating autophagy to eliminate existing advanced glycation end products (AGEs).

Formulations made with biotech-based ingredients
As skin care products made from natural ingredients have a dedicated following, companies now need to seek out more sustainable ways to grow these ingredients. And this is where biotechnology has stepped in.
In the past few years, more cosmetics ingredients companies, such as Naolys, have been focusing on creating cosmetics ingredients in this way.
In recent months, some of the biggest cosmetics houses have launched their own initiatives in this area. For example in late 2024, Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) announced plans to open a biotechnology hub in Belgium, near its manufacturing and distribution buildings.
This new hub, which will create proprietary, bio-based alternatives to traditional ingredients and strengthen the multinational’s global innovation and manufacturing network will manufacture bio-based raw materials.
ELC said its engineers and scientists will “manufacture active biomolecules from plant, yeast, and bacteria sources” that will be used as raw materials for thousands of skin care products across its portfolio of brands.
The team in Belgium will partner closely with ELC’s Advanced Technologies Pioneering (ATP) scientists in New York-based Research & Development (R&D) labs to work on projects related to fermentation and bio-based materials and collaboratively innovate for the future.

Testing with NAMs (Non-animal New Approach Methodologies)
Last but certainly not least, as some companies are still relying on in vivo testing on animals for clinical trials, particularly in certain markets, there has been increased innovation in this space to end this practice.
Even in Europe and the UK, where testing on animals for cosmetics purposes has long been banned, the situation is complex due to the current REACH regulations, which can contradict the ban if there is no alternative way to gain safety information.
As such, non-profit The Humane Society has now introduced a free course for scientists who want to train in NAMs.
The head of the UK cosmetics industry trade association the CTPA, Dr Emma Meredith, and the head of European industry trade association Cosmetics Europe both felt positive that this will change in the future.
Meredith said that the CTPA will “continue its in-depth work on championing the use and acceptance of animal-free scientific approaches with risk assessors, UK policy makers and international stakeholders.”
While Cosmetics Europe’s director-general John Chave said he hoped “to see significant steps forward on the shift towards non-animal methods for chemicals assessment under the new REACH proposal.”
One possible future testing method is bio-printed skin. CEO of bioprinting company Vital 3D Vidmantas Šakalys believed that this innovation holds the potential to revolutionise the cosmetics industry by offering advanced, ethical, and efficient testing methods that can enable the development of customised skin care products tailored to individual skin types based on testing with personalised skin models.
Šakalys also believed these kinds of innovations could accelerate product development due to faster testing cycles, simpler regulatory compliance, and also reduce costs.

Want to know more?
Keen to learn more about future skin care innovation? Sign up here for our free one-hour programme about Future Skin Care Innovation. We will be joined by:
- Rosalia di Gesu, who is associate director beauty & personal care at market intelligence firm Mintel
- Yvette Ye who is COO at skin care company Niance
- Dr Simon Ourian & Shari Jafari, the co-founders of Dr Simon Ourian MD
- And Jason Harcup who is chief R&D officer at Unilever’s beauty & wellbeing division

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