Q2 always tells a unique story. Like all quarters, it straddles two seasons and all that implies about how consumers shift their spending throughout the year. For beauty, that typically means ushering in summer. This year, Q2 also included Prime Day—the single largest shopping event on Amazon—which can reshape category rankings in just a few days. For the first time since 2021, Amazon held Prime Day in June, stretching the event across four days and ending the quarter with a flurry of sales that reflected consumers stocking up on favorites, taking advantage of deep discounts, and trying something new. That makes the Q2 Top 25 both a reflection of everyday consumer demand and a snapshot of which brands successfully capitalized on Amazon's biggest retail moment.
The quarter was led by Medicube Toner Pads Zero Pore Pad 2.0, 70 Pads (#1) for a second consecutive quarter. The rest of the Top 5 looked very different from Q1, with Mysense Patriotic Red White and Blue Face Hair Body Glitter Stick (#2), Biodance Bio-Collagen Real Deep Mask, 4 Count (#3), Amazon Basics Double-Tipped Cotton Swabs, 500 Count (#4), and Hero Cosmetics Mighty Patch Original Acne Pimple Patch, 36 Count (#5) rounding out the top positions.
In the remainder of the Top 10, there were two familiar names: The Ordinary Glycolic Acid 7% Exfoliating Toner (#8) stayed put, and Amazon Basics Hypoallergenic Cotton Rounds, 100 Count (#10) rounded out the list.
Suncare returned in force this quarter, with three placements vs. one in Q1: EltaMD UV Clear Face Sunscreen SPF, Oil-Free (#18, up from #22), Blue Lizard Sensitive Mineral Sunscreen SPF 50 (#12), and Banana Boat Sport Ultra SPF 50 (#19). Bodycare also expanded past lotion, with Eos Body Wash (#22), Naturium Multi-Oil Body Wash (#23), and Amazon Basics Epsom Salt Soak (#20) pointing to a skinification of bodycare. Nizoral Anti-Dandruff Shampoo, Q1's Top 10 haircare entry, slid to #24.
The quarter's biggest surprise was Mysense, which placed two different patriotic glitter sticks at #2 and #9. The World Cup drove a 17.2 billion increase in TikTok views in a single week, sending shoppers looking for game-day gear, and Prime Day landed at the same moment, with #primeday and #primedaydeals combining for 229.2 million TikTok views during the event window. Together, that social storm positioned Amazon to be the default place to convert all that FIFA-driven attention into a purchase, and the July 4 250th anniversary gave it a patriotic angle on top. Between those two products alone, Mysense sold an estimated 170,000 combined units in a single month on just 221 reviews, exactly the kind of sales velocity that can move Best Sellers Rank fast without a review history to back it up. That was enough to push both products into the Top 10 and knock others out entirely.
Novelty glitter has broken through this way before: Fazit's Glitter Freckles landed on Taylor Swift at a Chiefs game during Prime Big Deal Days 2024, and the brand shot to the top of Amazon's makeup charts overnight.
“We are seeing a massive shift in how the A10 algorithm weighs trust signals,” said Dave Karlsven, SVP of Partnerships & Growth at Market Defense. “Historically, you needed a ‘review moat’ of hundreds or even thousands of 4- and 5-star ratings to rank. Today, sales velocity driven by external traffic is the new currency.”
The average price point of the Skincare Top 10 was $13.52, up 5.1% from last quarter.
The average price point of the Haircare Top 10 was $23.54, up 24.9% from last quarter.
The average price point of the Makeup Top 10 was $8.46, down 13.7% from last quarter.
Prime Day 2026 was a record-setting week for e-commerce, and a strong one for Amazon specifically. The platform captured roughly 60 cents of every online dollar spent, its highest share since 2019. Beauty held 26% of the cart, exceeding last year's 25% peak. Medicube held the #1 spot overall in beauty for the second consecutive Prime Day, growing to 13.23% share of sales.
Search told an even sharper story. Medicube was the single most searched beauty term on Prime Day 2026, ranking third across the entire Amazon marketplace, above toothpaste and sunscreen, with an estimated 4.3 million searches, up from roughly 1.2 million the year before. PDRN, the salmon-DNA-derived active behind Medicube's hero product, was central to that rise: Its PDRN Pink Collagen Volume Multi Balm Stick was the single most-clicked beauty product of the event, and PDRN-named search terms entered the beauty search ranks for the first time in 2026. K-beauty broadened well past Medicube alone, capturing 10.5% of all beauty searches, up from 6.5% in 2025. Branded search overall kept gaining ground too, driving 20.2% of estimated beauty purchases, up from 17.4% a year earlier.
“Here's what actually stopped me in the data,” said Karlsven. “The single most searched beauty term on Prime Day was the brand name ‘medicube.’ Not sunscreen, not mascara, or another brand. For as long as I've done this work, generic terms have owned the top of search, and brands have fought for position underneath them. That flipped this year, and I don't believe it flips back.”
Sunscreen was riding that same search momentum, pulling 1.05 million monthly Amazon searches, up 14.1% year over year (YoY), a rise that's already showing up directly in the Q2 Top 25.
Sunscreen's climb up the Top 25 lines up with real category momentum. Amazon's sunscreen category generated over $870 million over the past year, growing 33.4% YoY, well ahead of most beauty subcategories this quarter. All three of the quarter's sunscreen entrants rank among the category's own Top 20 sellers: EltaMD UV Clear at #1, Blue Lizard Sensitive Mineral at #11, and Banana Boat Sport Ultra Spray at #16.
Blue Lizard is one of the category's fastest risers, up over $4 million in trailing revenue and 149% in 12-month growth.
EltaMD tells a more nuanced story. Its flagship UV Clear is down 3.6% in trailing revenue and 4% over the past 12 months, even though it holds the #1 spot in the category overall and moved up on our own chart. Best Sellers Rank reflects recent purchase velocity, while trailing revenue reflects the full year, so the two figures aren't in conflict; they're just measuring different things. “Sales velocity is what drives organic rankings and positioning on Amazon,” said Karlsven.
The category's money is also moving in a specific direction: toward premium, tinted, texture-led formulas backed by clinical positioning, not price. Of the five fastest-growing sunscreens by revenue, three are premium: Alastin HydraTint Pro Mineral Sunscreen, Supergoop! Unseen Sunscreen and BioCorneum's SPF Scar Treatment, at an average price of $56.93. The two remaining—Blue Lizard Sensitive Mineral SPF 50 (our chart's #12) and EltaMD UV Daily Tinted SPF 40, a different EltaMD product than the one on our own Top 25—average $27.85 between them, still above the category's $25.48 average. Even the “value” outliers on this list aren't cheap. Five sunscreens launched in the past year reached top-100 category revenue at a 67% price premium to the category average, so even new entrants are launching high rather than undercutting on price.
Meanwhile, the legacy mass-market lotions that built this category are leaking share: CeraVe AM Facial Moisturizing Lotion ($14.80) is down 14% in trailing revenue, and La Roche-Posay Anthelios Clear Skin ($19.79) is down 29%, part of a combined pullback of over $4 million across the category's five biggest decliners.
Beauty of Joseon and Korean sunscreen search terms combine for over 285,000 monthly searches on Amazon, yet no Korean brand appears in the category's Top 20 sellers. Most of the format's signature formulas use UV filters that aren't approved for sale in the US. That's starting to change: In June 2026, the FDA added bemotrizinol to the OTC sunscreen monograph, the first new US UV filter approved in decades, opening a path for the lighter, no-white-cast textures shoppers have been searching for without being able to buy them domestically.
“Sunscreen is behaving exactly like every other category we've tracked this year,” said Amy Rudgard, SVP of Client Strategy at Market Defense. “The brands winning aren't relying on one channel to do the work. Dermatologist recommendation, prestige retail, social content, and Amazon are all reinforcing the same message at the same time, so by the time a shopper searches, they've already heard the brand's story two or three times over. That's the connected commerce approach at work, not one channel doing the heavy lifting for the others.”
Previous Reports:
Q1 2026 Amazon Top 25 Beauty & Personal Care
Q4 2025 Amazon Top 25 Beauty & Personal Care
Q3 2025 Amazon Top 25 Beauty & Personal Care
Q2 2025 Amazon Top 25 Beauty & Personal Care
