Sephora is preparing to enter Israel for the first time, but the retailer’s arrival will look markedly different from the multi-brand beauty experience that has fueled its global expansion across markets including the UK, Mexico, and India in recent years.
The LVMH-owned beauty retailer will launch in Israel starting August 20, Sephora Collection products will be available in dedicated pop-up boutiques within Azrieli malls, as well as in Glam42 retail locations. The first locations are expected to open in Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, and Jerusalem, with additional stores following. Despite media speculation that Sephora is preparing to enter the Israeli market outside of the Glam42 partnership as standalone retail locations, a Sephora spokesperson told BeautyMatter via email that “Sephora has no plans to open stores in Israel.”
However, Sephora’s initial assortment will be limited to Sephora Collection products—the retailer’s private-label makeup, skincare, haircare, and beauty offering. Third-party brands that have become integral to Sephora’s global proposition will not be available through the retailer during the pilot stage. “The Sephora Collection brand has signed a one-off resale agreement with the retailer Glam42. A limited selection of Sephora Collection products will soon be available in select Glam42 stores.”
The launch differentiates itself from the retailer’s usual competitive advantage, which increasingly rests on its ability to aggregate some of beauty’s most sought-after brands under one roof.
The limited assortment therefore raises a larger question: how does a global beauty retailer expand into a politically sensitive market when brands that ordinarily power its proposition may have their own distribution strategies, commercial considerations, and reputational risks?
Israel’s cosmetics market is estimated to reach $408.5 million in 2026, and is projected to grow to $511.6 million by 2031, representing a compound annual growth rate of 4.6%, according to Mordor Intelligence. The research points to travel exposure, social media, and demand for international luxury products as contributors to premiumization within the market.
Glam42 already operates within Israel’s premium beauty market, selling brands including Dior, Armani, Prada, Gucci, Lancôme, Estée Lauder, and Kilian Paris, alongside niche fragrance labels. The addition of Sephora gives the retailer access to one of global beauty’s most recognizable retail identities while giving Sephora local infrastructure and access to a new market.
The limited assortment also creates a notable gap between the Sephora Collection presence in Israel and the experience consumers typically associate with the Sephora name internationally. Its stores function as points of sale and, more importantly, a curated beauty marketplace, where established prestige players sit alongside digitally native and celebrity-founded businesses.
Without that portfolio, Sephora Israel initially resembles a branded Sephora Collection concept more than the full beauty marketplace consumers encounter in Paris, London, Dubai, or New York.
The absence of third-party brands is particularly notable given how strongly Sephora’s international growth has become intertwined with beauty’s most culturally relevant names like Huda Beauty, Rare Beauty, Charlotte Tilbury, and Fenty Beauty. However, their absence should not automatically be interpreted as a political decision. Distribution rights, import arrangements, regulatory requirements, and individual brand strategies can all determine whether a product enters a new market.
Rare Beauty illustrates that distinction particularly clearly. Selena Gomez’s brand is separately becoming more widely available in Israel this month through pharmacy retailer Be Pharm. However, the products are being sourced through parallel imports rather than an official distribution agreement with Rare Beauty. According to Israeli news outlet Ynet, Be Pharm purchased millions of shekels worth of Rare Beauty inventory ahead of the rollout in an effort to prevent the products from immediately selling out.
That means Rare Beauty can simultaneously be absent from Sephora Israel’s official assortment while products appear elsewhere in the country without a brand establishing an authorized local retailer partnership.
Fenty Beauty similarly operates across several Middle Eastern Sephora markets. The brand’s current international retail information identifies Sephora distribution in the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait, among other territories, but does not list Israel among those markets.
Charlotte Tilbury’s published list of authorized retailers includes Sephora partnerships across markets including the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Mexico, and the UK, but currently does not list an Israeli retail partner.
The absence of these brands reveal how complicated international beauty expansion can become: Sephora entering a country does not automatically mean every company stocked by Sephora elsewhere enters with it.
That complexity has become considerably more pronounced since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza. Consumer boycotts and political activism have increasingly scrutinized where multinational companies operate, invest, and sell.
While much of the impact has fallen on food and beverage companies, the movement has extended into fashion and beauty, with consumers using social media to scrutinize corporate ownership, distribution relationships, and perceived connections to Israel. For beauty companies, whose marketing increasingly relies on values, community, and highly engaged social audiences, the reputational calculation can be particularly complicated.
Huda Beauty demonstrates how directly those dynamics can enter the beauty conversation. Founder Huda Kattan has been an outspoken supporter of Palestine and has previously used her platform to discuss the war in Gaza. Her political commentary has also generated controversy: In 2025, TikTok removed a video in which Kattan allegedly promoted false conspiracy theories blaming Israel for events including both World Wars and the September 11 attacks. The comments were widely condemned as antisemitic and prompted calls for Sephora to sever ties with Huda Beauty, although the retailer continues to carry the brand.
Sephora operates across markets with dramatically different political environments and consumer expectations while simultaneously maintaining relationships with founders and brands whose personal identities and public positions have become inseparable from their businesses. Its Israeli expansion brings those tensions into sharper focus.
The Sephora Israel launch also arrives as the retailer continues an aggressive period of international expansion. With more than 3,000 stores globally, Sephora has increasingly positioned physical retail as a discovery engine for the brands in its ecosystem. Its success has come partly from creating localized versions of a recognizable global formula: prestige brands, emerging labels, exclusives, services, and Sephora Collection brought together within a highly experiential environment.
Israel tests how flexible that formula can become. Launching primarily with Sephora Collection gives Sephora and Glam42 the ability to establish the retailer’s name, collect sales data, and assess demand before considering introducing a broader assortment. It also limits the number of external brand partners required to participate from day one.
If the pilot succeeds, Sephora could choose to gradually bring additional brands into the market and move closer to its conventional multi-brand model. Which brands ultimately agree to participate may prove as interesting as the sales numbers themselves.
Beauty’s globalization has traditionally been framed around logistics, regulation, consumer demand, and distribution. Increasingly, another variable sits alongside them: geopolitics. Sephora’s Israeli experiment offers an unusually visible test of what happens when one of beauty's most powerful global retailers enters a market where commercial opportunity and political sensitivity are impossible to completely separate.
