This year, global temperatures soared, with heatwaves and drought conditions impacting a significantly higher number of countries than ever before.
Globally, July 2026 tied with July 2024 as the hottest month on record, according to the United States National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Global Climate Report for July 2026. The report shows that global surface temperatures during the month were 2.12°F (1.18°C) above the 20th-century average, with North America, Africa, and Asia each experiencing the warmest July ever recorded. Meanwhile, Western Europe remains stuck in a severe heatwave, with scorching temperatures for the past three months.
As a result, consumers across the globe are being forced to adapt to a new normal. Air conditioning sales have risen sharply in Western Europe, online shopping has surged in the UK as shoppers avoid the heat, and consumers in France are favoring air-conditioned malls instead of city center stores for cooler shopping conditions.
As global consumers brace for more heat ahead, the World Meteorological Organization has said a strong El Niño is developing and expected to strengthen between August and October 2026. The question of how these weather predictions will impact beauty consumption and whether any movements in response are emerging remains.
Enter “cooling beauty.” A raft of brands across the globe are innovating with smart ingredients, carriers, blends, formats, and tools to offer some respite from the heat. And the science behind these developments continues to gain important traction.
“As climate change accelerates and extreme heat becomes an unfortunate norm across the globe, no matter what season, we're seeing beauty products accelerate innovation to provide a sensorial sanctuary from heat exposure,” said Mallory Huron, Director of Beauty & Wellness at trend agency Future Snoops.
Beauty brands are increasingly working to develop products and tools that provide relief from high heat, humidity, and sweat as the globe faces “extreme environmental conditions,” Huron told BeautyMatter.
Plenty of standout examples can be seen in Asia, she said, including the Thai skincare brand MizuMi, with its UV Cooling SPF Body Serum, which features aloe vera and cucumber to provide sensorial relief alongside high-level UVA/UVB protection. The product is stocked by retailers across Asia and sold online through resellers in other global markets. Korean derma skincare brand Cell Fusion C has a Post Alpha Cooling Pad Toner soaked with panthenol and glacier water to quickly cool and hydrate the skin, according to the company, and Philippine brand Happy Skin Cosmetics has a Dew Aqua Cooling Setting Powder that uses “a unique 50% water + powder blend” to provide a refreshing sensation when applied while improving makeup longevity.
Plenty of innovation is also coming out of the US, Huron said. Procter & Gamble’s deodorant brand Secret, for example, recently launched a Whole Body Cooling Deodorant Mist targeting sweat and odor reduction alongside temperature regulation. The company claims the product can cool skin by 10 degrees thanks to rapid evaporation that draws heat away from the skin, according to a small-scale, in-house study measuring skin temperatures post-application.
Rael Beauty's Cryo + Soothing Hydrogel Mask is designed to cool and reduce redness, temporarily lowering skin temperature by 45 degrees after use, according to a small two-week clinical study conducted by the company. And Sophia Pavitt is blending cryotherapy with skincare via its Nice Ice Frozen Toner Pods that can be put in the freezer and then used to hydrate, reduce inflammation, and revive skin, according to the brand. US appliance brand Shark also recently released its ChillPill 3-in-1 personal fan and cooling system, which has proven hugely successful during recent hot months.
“These products are the natural result of a vital human need to prepare for and recover from environments that are increasingly hot and humid. In this sense, cooling products have come to signify more than a superficial sensorial gimmick, but instead are being viewed as an essential part of hot weather care,” Huron said.
Globally, interest in cooling products is rising, though traction is building from a very small base, and consumer awareness remains low, the US trend-tracking firm Spate shows.
Spate's Popularity Index, which combines data from Google, Instagram, and TikTok to indicate category or trend popularity, shows a 356.5% YoY rise in interest for cooling eye pads globally; a 175.5% rise for cooling body gel; a 121% rise for cooling masks; and a 117.2% rise in interest for cooling moisturizer. Each of these trends, however, remains categorized as “very low popularity” or “low popularity” for now.
“Interest is increasing, but the trend remains in its early stages,” said Mathilde Riba, Beauty Insights Manager at Spate. “All the cooling beauty trends we cover here have very low popularity or low popularity, indicating very low to low awareness among consumers.”
In Korea, though, Spate data shows that interest in cooling masks is a steady seasonal demand and not a new trend, with interest up 43.6% YoY, “off a huge 3.5 million popularity base,” Riba said. “Korea also shows strong, established growth in cooling face mist (+17.7%) and cooling scalp spray (+16.7%), neither of which has shown up in US data yet, pointing to possible whitespace,” she said.
According to Huron, cooling beauty innovation is certainly higher across Asia, and it's a market others can look to for inspiration.
“Cooling products have been present across Asian markets for decades due to hot, humid weather, with Korea, Japan, and Thailand standing out in terms of innovations. In addition to topical product formulations, these markets are also ahead of the game in terms of personal cooling devices: clip-on fans, misters, and cooling tech have been long-integrated into the culture out of sheer necessity.”
These markets have also been ahead in integrating cooling benefits into a variety of product categories, she said, such as SPF, haircare, color cosmetics, wellness products, and more.
Over two decades ago, major Japanese health and hygiene brand Kobayashi Pharmaceutical launched cooling gel sheets designed to be applied to the forehead. Fellow Japanese conglomerate Unicharm Corporation launched cooling sanitary pads under its Sofy brand in 2019, integrating menthol and high-breathability technology to reduce heat, stickiness, and sweat.
This year, Japanese beauty conglomerate Shiseido launched a limited-edition, freezable skincare product, Sorbet Serum, that transforms from a gel into a granita-style frozen texture to deliver cooling effects while actively working to tighten pores and calm and hydrate the skin, according to the brand. Korean brand Dr.Jart+ also has a powder-to-sorbet mask, Cryo Sorbet, that requires users to mix it with water until it reaches a sorbet-like texture. The company suggests that this can then be stored in the fridge for 10 minutes before application for an instant cooling effect. Another South Korean brand leaning into the sorbet movement is Some By Mi with its rinse-off mask, Spirulina PDRN Soothing Sherbet Mask, designed to cool, soothe, and hydrate overheated or irritated skin.
While Asian brands have been working in this field for years, the ingredient technology and cosmetic chemistry are not straightforward, and there are many hurdles companies face when working to develop efficient cooling beauty products, says Dr. Dominika Andrys, independent cosmetic scientist, beauty industry consultant, and author.
Stability and delivery are a core challenge, Andrys explained, because of how volatile cooling agents can be—degrading, migrating, or losing potency in emulsion form, for example. “Getting a strong cool that survives shelf-life and doesn't fade after the first few uses is a real formulation challenge, not a given,” she told BeautyMatter.
Concentration versus tolerability is also a hurdle facing formulators, she said, because while higher cooling-agent loads provide more marketable sensations, they also raise the risk of irritation, tingling that feels like “burning” rather than “cooling,” and sensitization on repeat use.
Claims substantiation is also a tough point for brands because real in-use or instrumental data around things like skin surface temperature and consumer perception are needed to defend “instant cooling” or “heat relief” claims credibly. And solid claims are incredibly important in this space, Andrys said.
“This generation of consumers is comfortable Googling an INCI list, and “cooling” is one of the easiest claims in cosmetics to fake with fragrance alone—a mint or eucalyptus note can create a perceived cooling illusion through smell association without any real thermal receptor activation,” she explained. Credible cooling claims in beauty, therefore, need to be clinically backed or, at the very least, informally proven via a basic consumer perception panel or skin temperature measurements, she said.
Luckily for industry, she said, “cooling is one of the rare beauty trends with genuine, well-characterized biology behind it.” Research into TRPM8, for example, the cold-activated nerve receptors found in skin, nerve fibers, the tongue, and non-neuronal tissues, is extensive, she said, with “decades of real receptor science.” This gives brands an unusually solid foundation to build on and raises the bar for innovation because the mechanism is legitimate and increasingly well known among educated consumers, Andrys said.
The scientific evidence supporting hydrogels is also strengthening. Last year, US scientists explored how a hybrid thermoelectric device (TED) can be used in combination with a hydrogel to pump heat away from the skin while simultaneously increasing the hydrogel's temperature to enhance evaporation, resulting in an “effective personal cooling solution.” In 2024, researchers from Hong Kong also concluded that passive hydrogels can provide strong and capable cooling power for effective heat dissipation and suggested that thermal interface material (TIM) hydrogels and thermoelectric hydrogels offer promise but require further study.
Many beauty brands are working with hydrogel technology to offer cooling effects and more. US brand Patchology’s entire Serve Chilled On Ice range centers on hydrogel technology, offering a range of face and eye masks targeting different needs, including firming, brightening, and resetting. Swedish beauty tech brand Foreo also offers a hydrogel mask infused with peptides, Edelweiss stem cells, and collagen that can be used alone or underneath the brand’s LED mask for a synergistic treatment. The company says the gel-like texture of the hydrogel mask seals over the face like a second skin and gets thinner as the active ingredients get to work.
For brands diving into the cooling beauty trend, Huron said it will be key to position products as more than just a nice-to-have for summer relief, whether that's a cooling topical, a hydrating ingestible, or a portable device for temperature control.
“As climate change accelerates, these products will be essential for us to function as we go about our routines year-round. In the same way that we view SPF or other climate-adaptive infrastructure essentials, so too, we must societally adapt to more extreme weather through our beauty products,” she said. “Heat waves and spikes that used to be once-in-a-lifetime events are now regularly occurring weather patterns, and warmer weather is extending far past usual seasonal boundaries. Due to this, staying cool and dry is a legitimate, urgent human need, not merely a superficial, dismissible concern, and beauty formulations have the unique opportunity to provide something essential for our lives moving into this new reality.”
Andrys agreed: “The brands that win here will be the ones treating cooling as a functional skin-comfort category, grounded in real ingredient science, tested for actual performance, and paired with barrier and anti-inflammatory support, rather than a seasonal marketing flourish riding on rising temperatures.”
Companies must be able to offer two aspects to cooling products, she said: immediate sensory payoff and actual physiological benefits working together, “not in isolation.”
Looking ahead, Andrys said there is plenty of opportunity to expand cooling beauty products into after-sun, scalp care, and sun care, and lots to be done with newer synthetic coolants like WS-23 that are migrating from oral care into skincare, as well as combining cooling agents with functional actives. Smart format adjustments too, like incorporating roll-ons and fridge-friendly packaging, will also be key in taking the cooling beauty movement even further.
“Historically, this space lived quietly in sun aftercare, insect-bite gels, and a handful of 'icy' toners. What's changed in the last 12-18 months is that cooling has moved from a niche sub-category into a mainstream product claim across skincare, haircare, and bodycare,” Andrys said. “That's a meaningful shift: cooling used to be a texture note in the marketing copy; now it's becoming a primary purchase driver in its own right, sitting alongside barrier repair and redness relief as a core skin concern.”
