Target is entering its post-Ulta Beauty era with beauty firmly in growth mode.
The retailer generated $3.64 billion in beauty sales in the second quarter of 2026, up 7.2% from $3.40 billion in the same period last year. Beauty was one of Target's strongest-performing categories during the quarter, delivering high-single-digit growth alongside food and beverage and outpacing the retailer's overall net sales growth of 5.3%.
The momentum matters beyond the quarterly numbers. Target's five-year shop-in-shop partnership with Ulta Beauty concludes this month, leaving the mass retailer to prove that the beauty authority it built with Ulta Beauty can hold on its own.
So far, the numbers give it a strong start. Beauty sales reached $7.04 billion in the first six months of 2026, up from $6.50 billion during the same period last year. The second quarter alone added approximately $243 million in beauty sales year over year.
That is a notable reversal from a year ago. During Target's second-quarter 2025 earnings call, beauty sales were described as "down slightly,” following consumer boycotts in March as retaliation for the scaling back of DEI initiatives. However, the retailer cited low-single-digit growth in skincare, bath, and haircare within its core beauty business. At the time, Target was also preparing investors for the end of the Ulta Beauty partnership, acknowledging how quickly consumer expectations were changing in the category.
A year later, beauty has shifted from a category in transition to one helping power Target's broader turnaround.
Overall Q2 net sales rose to $26.5 billion, while comparable sales increased 3.8%, driven in part by a 3.6% increase in traffic. In-store comparable sales rose 2.7%, digital comparable sales grew 8.7%, and same-day delivery increased more than 25%. Target subsequently raised its full-year net sales guidance to around 5% growth.
But beauty occupies a particularly strategic position within that recovery. Target has already made clear how strategically important beauty is to its wider turnaround. At its March 2026 Financial Community Meeting, Chief Merchandising Officer Cara Sylvester described beauty as one of the retailer’s most powerful traffic- and margin-driving categories, following more than a decade of growth. She outlined four pillars for Target’s next phase in beauty: stronger prestige and emerging brands, elevated in-store discovery, knowledgeable service, and loyalty.
Those ambitions are about to become considerably more visible.
This fall, Target will introduce Target Beauty Studio across more than 600 stores, positioning the concept as an immersive beauty destination that pairs specialty-level presentation and service with the accessibility of Target's broader retail model. The retailer has framed the move as a structural investment rather than simply a replacement for the square footage previously occupied by Ulta Beauty.
The Ulta Beauty partnership, launched in 2021, provided Target with a shortcut into prestige beauty at a time when the traditional boundaries between mass and specialty retail were rapidly dissolving. Beauty consumers increasingly wanted to shop prestige, masstige, and mass brands within the same journey, while Ulta Beauty gained access to Target's huge store footprint and customer base.
Target Beauty Studio now demands that Target perform more of that curatorial work itself. The retailer has already been expanding its assortment ahead of the transition. In March, Target said it had introduced approximately 3,000 new beauty products and 60 new brands, with management citing an early positive consumer response. It is also expanding its prestige assortment, piloting enhanced beauty service in select stores, and integrating category-specific rewards more directly into its existing rewards program, Target Circle.
In other words, Target is not simply attempting to replace Ulta Beauty’s logo with its own. The retailer is borrowing some of the mechanics that have made specialty beauty successful: discovery, education, emerging brands, elevated merchandising, and loyalty, while attempting to combine them with the convenience and pricing architecture of a mass merchant.
That places Target within a broader reshaping of US beauty distribution. The category is increasingly important to retailers that historically competed more heavily around grocery, household goods, or general merchandise, while specialty players are simultaneously widening their reach. For brands, the result is a retail landscape in which the distinction between mass and prestige matters less than where consumers are willing to discover, trial, and replenish products.
Target has an additional advantage in frequency. Consumers may visit a specialty beauty retailer specifically to shop for beauty; Target has the opportunity to turn a grocery run, a home purchase, or a same-day order into an incremental beauty transaction. Its continued investment in digital and same-day fulfillment makes that proposition increasingly omnichannel as well. More than 25% growth in same-day delivery during Q2 suggests convenience remains an important part of the retailer's wider momentum.
Still, there is risk attached to the transition. Ulta brought established prestige relationships, beauty-specific equity, and a clear reason for enthusiasts to explore Target's shop-in-shops. Target Beauty Studio will have to establish its own authority while ensuring the transition does not disrupt a category that currently generates more than $3.6 billion in quarterly sales.
Target acknowledged that challenge during its first-quarter earnings call, saying it was working to minimize disruption during the transition while curating trending products and building plans around the Beauty Studio rollout. The retailer's Q2 performance suggests it is entering that test with momentum. Beauty isn't merely holding up as the Ulta partnership winds down; it is growing faster than Target as a whole.
The next question is whether Target can turn that momentum into something harder to build than sales: true beauty authority.
