Each year, in-cosmetics Global in Paris serves as the clearest early signal of where the beauty industry is heading, not in terms of finished products, but in the science that will eventually power them. This year's event brought together more than 1,000 exhibitors, 14,000 industry professionals, and 250 new ingredient launches across three days at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles.
BeautyMatter spent three days on the floor conducting interviews with ingredient manufacturers, attending talks, and reviewing every launch in the Innovation Hub. Notable panel discussions included trend forecaster WGSN's deep dive into the GLP-1 consumer and K18's talk on hair biology. What emerged was not a scattered list of trends but a concentrated set of signals—consistent, reinforcing, and already moving into formulation briefs.
For the past few years, "longevity" has functioned as a premium positioning tool in beauty. Brands attached the word to products and trusted it to do the heavy lifting. What is happening now at the ingredient level is fundamentally different, signaling that the era of vague longevity claims is drawing to a close.
Scientists have identified 12 distinct biological hallmarks of aging—processes such as cellular senescence, in which damaged cells stop functioning but refuse to die, and mitochondrial dysfunction, in which the energy engines of skin cells begin to fail. The ingredient launches at this year's show were not targeting aging in general but rather specific hallmarks, with mechanism-specific clinical evidence for each.
Mibelle Biochemistry's EpiSnow, which generated significant attention on the show floor, works through epigenetic modulation, essentially influencing which genes are switched on or off in skin cells. According to Dr. Cornelia Schürch, the Swiss company's Managing Director, EpiSnow addresses eight of the twelve recognized hallmarks of aging. "The longevity science is still driving quite heavily," she said to BeautyMatter, "to see what pathways are affected and how we can counteract these things, to really age healthily and stay fit as long as possible, with the most beautiful appearance."
Other launches reinforced the same direction. Spain-based Algaktiv and its Algaktiv Vitalys claim to specifically target the relationship between telomeres and mitochondria. Turkish company Normactive's AST-4 claims to activate a specific biological pathway linked to longer, healthier cell life. These are not marketing angles, but rather pharmaceutical-grade frameworks being applied to cosmetic formulation for the first time, according to the companies.
For brands, the practical implication is strategic. Formulators are increasingly requesting hallmark-specific briefs rather than general anti-aging briefs. The ingredient suppliers who can answer those briefs with precision data will gain preferential relationships with formulators. The brands that can translate that precision into clear consumer communication will build a credibility advantage that broad longevity claims cannot.
One of the most consequential presentations at in-cosmetics Global 2026 came not from a traditional ingredient supplier but from US-based K18, the haircare brand now backed by Unilever's R&D infrastructure. Their session proposed something that sounds straightforward but carries significant implications: hair should be understood as a biological system with a lifespan, not as a fiber that requires cosmetic maintenance.
The hair follicle, the brand argued, ages. It ages through the same biological mechanisms as skin: cellular senescence, stem cell exhaustion, and mitochondrial stress. The goal of haircare should be to extend what they term the "functional health span" of the follicle, rather than addressing breakage or dullness after the fact. This is the difference between prevention and repair, applied to a category that has historically been built almost entirely on the latter.
The ingredient market is beginning to reflect this shift. PhytoSpherix Hair, also launched by Mibelle Biochemistry, claims to deliver plant-derived glycogen directly to the follicle, essentially supplying cellular fuel to support long-term hair vitality.
Spain-based LipoTrue introduced Keraduo, a fusion protein that mimics the structural relationship between keratin and collagen in healthy follicle tissue, according to the company. On the biotech side, Turkish ACTV Biotech's ProliCell BaiCare claims to use engineered plant exosomes to influence gene expression at the follicle level.
What is notable is that these launches arrived independently from different companies across different ingredient categories, yet they all tell the same story. Hair longevity is not being built as a marketing subcategory, but as a scientific one. The brands that recognize this early will have a significant advantage in a channel where premium positioning is actively looking for the next defensible claim.
The beauty industry has discussed simplification for years. What is happening now goes further: it is not about fewer products in a routine, but about each individual product carrying greater genuine functional responsibility.
Supplier after supplier on the show floor described a change in the nature of brand briefs over the past 18 to 24 months. Requests that used to specify a single primary function now arrive with layered requirements: a skincare product that provides daily hydration, meaningful photoprotection, long-term structural skin support, formulated to a texture that drives daily compliance. Not three products. One.
Fabrice Lefèvre, Marketing and Innovation Director at France-based Givaudan Active Beauty, described this as part of a broader shift in consumer priorities. "There is a global shift from what I call glamour to health," he said to BeautyMatter. "It goes beyond anti-aging. It's about how you can make people feel and live better." The implication for ingredient science is that actives need to be designed with compatibility and synergy in mind from the outset, not formulated independently and combined later.
Brittney Wallat from US-based Hallstar Beauty, which specializes in suncare ingredients, described a related shift in that category. Consumers are no longer treating UV protection as a seasonal or situational product. "People are looking for their sun protection to be a part of their daily wear," she told BeautyMatter. "Not just ‘I'm going to the beach’—they're looking for it to be a part of their everyday routine." The brief is increasingly for skincare that integrates meaningful SPF as one of several co-equal benefits.
The sensorial dimension of this shift was visible throughout the show floor. The Sensory Bar attracted sustained crowds across all three days, a physical manifestation of the industry's recognition that texture and sensory experience are no longer secondary to performance. They are part of the performance. How a product feels determines whether it gets used every day. Daily use determines whether the clinical claims are ever realized.
The ingestible beauty category has spent several years cycling through hype and skepticism. At in-cosmetics Global 2026, something different was visible: the category behaved with the confidence of an established science platform rather than an emerging trend.
The “From Gut to Glow” panel drew one of the largest audiences of the three-day event. The discussion brought together microbiome scientists, cosmetic formulators, brand strategists, and trend forecasters—a combination that would have been unusual at an ingredient show five years ago. The convergence of those perspectives on a single stage reflects how seriously the industry is now treating the inner-outer beauty connection.
The scientific foundation for this convergence is substantive. The gut microbiome produces metabolites, including short-chain fatty acids and specific amino acid derivatives, that enter the bloodstream and reach the skin, where they can influence barrier integrity, the inflammatory response, and cellular aging. Christina Vegge, VP of R&D at Sweden-based Probi, described this mechanism in detail and pointed to where the science is heading: away from broad probiotic claims and toward strain-specific interventions with endpoints that map to visible skin outcomes. "Identifying those unique strains that can really promote a significant benefit to the skin, and then showing that in well-designed and well-powered clinical studies," she said to BeautyMatter, "that is the direction."
Collagen peptides currently represent the largest commercial segment within nutricosmetics, with ceramides and omega fatty acids following as the next growth categories. But the panel's most significant contribution was an honest assessment of the category's current weakness: the absence of large-scale, diverse, in-person clinical trials. Consumer testing across different ethnicities, age groups, and geographies remains rare. Brands that invest in generating that evidence will build a trust advantage that early movers in the topical skincare clinical space have built over the last decade.
WGSN delivered one of the most data-rich sessions of the show, focused entirely on how GLP-1 weight-loss medications are changing what consumers need in beauty and wellness. The scale of the phenomenon is significant: approximately one in eight American adults has already used these medications, and semaglutide patents expired in China and India in March 2026, opening those markets to generic versions at a fraction of the current cost.
What makes this commercially relevant for beauty is not the scale of GLP-1 adoption alone, but the combination of scale with a specific, unmet set of appearance concerns. 80% of users worry about loose, sagging skin. 51% notice their overall skin looking worse. 47% experience visible loss of facial fullness. Hair thinning, chronic dehydration, and nutrient depletion from long-term use add further complexity for consumers who are simultaneously experiencing significant gains in confidence—80% report improved self-image after beginning treatment.
This creates an unusual consumer profile: highly motivated, appearance-focused, financially engaged with beauty, and almost completely unaddressed by existing product ranges. The brands currently gaining traction are those that explicitly target this consumer and build around their specific journey, rather than retrofitting existing SKUs with tangentially relevant claims.
The ingredient pipeline is already forming around this consumer. Intensilk (made by Spain’s Provital S.A.), derived from upcycled apple blossom, works, according to the company, by mimicking caloric-restriction pathways in fat cells, placing it at the direct intersection of longevity science and weight-management biology. California-based SC Labs launched SC Dietskin TIGHTER specifically to address the loss of elasticity that accompanies rapid weight change. In fragrance, WGSN identified two parallel emerging behaviors: hedonic substitution, where reduced food intake increases the emotional significance of scent experiences, and a counter-trend toward minimal, low-diffusion formats driven by the nausea sensitivity that higher medication doses can produce.
The first-mover window for this consumer is real and currently open. The brands that build genuine product solutions will define a category that lacks an established leader.
If one conversation repeated itself most across 30 floor interviews at in-cosmetics Global 2026, it was this: the industry's tolerance for unsubstantiated innovation claims is rapidly shrinking.
The pressure is coming from multiple directions simultaneously. Formulators are more scientifically literate than they were five years ago and are asking harder questions about mechanism and clinical design. Brands are under increasing pressure from retailers and consumers to validate what is on the label. And the proliferation of "biotech-derived" and "fermentation-based" language across the show floor has created credibility fatigue, making proof more valuable, not less.
Dominika Andrys, a cosmetic chemist and brand consultant at UK-based Beauty Brand Formula, addressed the biotech dimension on the “From Gut to Glow” panel: "Biotech today is positioned as innovation more because of how the ingredients are made, not how they feel on the skin and how they perform. That is a B2B story rather than a function of the ingredient. Consumers don't buy fermentation processes. They buy results."
Wallat articulated the shift from the supplier side: "Formulators are looking for something not only with good performance, but with clinical efficacy, and they are looking for us to continuously push our data sets through in vivo testing." “In vivo” testing is conducted on a living body and is increasingly treated as the minimum rather than the premium.
Scalability is the second dimension of this shift. A biotech active that performs beautifully in a laboratory setting but cannot be manufactured at commercial volume is not a market-ready ingredient. Rinki Pramanik from UK-based Urenew Beauty put it plainly: "If it is not scalable across 50,000 units, then it really loses its purpose."
The net effect is a quiet but meaningful recalibration of what "innovation" means in the ingredient market. The most compelling launches at this year's show were not necessarily the most novel; they were the ones that combined genuine functional differentiation with the clinical and manufacturing evidence to support it.
Three days at in-cosmetics Global does not give a complete picture of where the beauty industry is heading. What it produces is an early-stage signal from the people building the science that will eventually power that future.
The signals from this year's show are unusually coherent. Longevity is becoming a precision discipline. Hair is being reconceptualized as a health category. Consumer expectations around multifunctionality are outpacing most current product ranges. The gut-skin connection is moving from hypothesis to clinical infrastructure. A new, high-value consumer group created by GLP-1 adoption is waiting for products designed specifically for them. And the industry's standard of evidence is quietly rising across every category.
Ingredient science moves two to three years ahead of the shelf. The brands paying attention to what is happening at the formulation level right now are the ones who will be ready when these signals become mainstream expectations.