PROGRAM AND ANIMATIONS 2026
Understand the market. Anticipate trends. Make better decisions.
MakeUp in NewYork presented a curated series of conferences and animations tailored for beauty professionals, crafted to expand your expertise, spark creativity, and deliver practical solutions to meet your consumers’ evolving expectations
Conferences, Beauty Talks, the IT Awards, two days to leave with a clear understanding of what’s shaping the industry.
Conferences - 3 tracks. 14 sessions. A clear reading of the market
Over two days, the conference program brought together the voices that matter in beauty: international experts, founders, retail and AI specialists, journalists, and trend agencies. Each session offered a different perspective, from science to culture, from formulation to business.
Three major tracks structured the 2026 edition :
- Beauty Business & Market Dynamics: who will define the next decade
- Innovation, Tech & Science: what's real, and what's just a claim
- Creativity, Culture & Community: where culture is taking beauty next
IT Awards 2026: The innovations driving the industry forward
Each year, the Innovation & Trends Awards spotlight the most outstanding innovations presented by exhibitors: breakthrough ingredients, unprecedented textures, formulations that push boundaries, and packaging that redefines beauty gestures.
Every innovation was first reviewed in Paris by an international jury of beauty experts, who named the finalists across four categories: Ingredients, Contract Manufacturing, Packaging, Accessories. These finalists then traveled to New York, where a dedicated US jury of industry leaders selected the winners, along with two Special Awards.
Finalists and winners were showcased in an exceptional display at the heart of the show, offering a tangible insight into what's ahead for the cosmetics industry.
Beauty Talks
Voices of beauty intelligence took the floor.
A format now well established and recognized within the trade show landscape, the Beauty Talks 2026 featured around ten independent experts each speaking from their own field of observation.
45 minutes to understand where the market was heading : from weak signals to long-term shifts, from the Asian field to North American data, from advisory work for major maisons to pure beauty analysis.
CEW, a longstanding partner of MakeUp in NewYork
The leading community of beauty executives in the United States has supported the MakeUp in shows for nearly ten years, in New York as well as in Los Angeles and Paris.
Cosmetic Executive Women brings together the people who lead the American beauty industry: brand executives, retailers, founders, the decision-makers who shape where the market goes. Its programs, its awards and its insights are a reference the entire industry watches.
A loyal presence at the New York edition, CEW this year hosted an exclusive conference and sat on the US jury of the IT Awards, alongside the experts who distinguished the innovations of the edition.
A long-term partnership, serving the decision-makers of beauty.
The Gesture
An experience by Raphaël Makeup Brushes, with Isabelle Pain
A brush only becomes a true tool the moment a hand takes hold of it.
Handcrafting brushes in France since 1793, Raphaël brought its workshop to the show floor. A series of photographs set the hands that make the brushes against the hands that use them, and each brush on display was told from the way it is made through to the way it is applied on the face. Two demonstrations each day, one educational, one artistic.
The stakes were concrete. An applicator is not chosen from a catalog: shape, fibers, density and architecture act directly on the performance of a formula. In the Gesture Studio, marketing, R&D, product development and packaging teams came with real questions, which applicator for a new texture, which shape for a simpler gesture, how to support watery, gel, bouncy or hybrid formulas.
Rethink the tool. Design the gesture.
7 Trend agencies welcomed you on their dedicated spaces
For the 2026 edition, MakeUp in NewYork brought together 7 trend agencies and independent experts from Europe, the United States, and Asia. Each partner hosted a dedicated space at the heart of the show, a place to connect in person, explore their latest reports, discover curated selections of inspiring products, and initiate future collaborations.From cultural decoding to behavioral data, from the formulation lab to Asian market expertise.
The Emotion of Color in Cosmetics
An exhibition by Isabelle Pain
Color can only be fully experienced through matter.
Conceived as a library of solid colors, the exhibition brought together raw materials and formulated products, eyeshadows, powders, lipsticks, selected in collaboration with manufacturers exhibiting at the show. Matte, satin, metallic, iridescent, every shade and every texture was presented for what it makes possible in range development.
The stakes were concrete. Marketing teams often build their palettes from the market's best sellers, a reflex that feels safe but flattens the category. By making the full range of available finishes visible and tangible, the exhibition was an invitation to move past the benchmark and explore more distinctive palettes, true to each brand's DNA and ahead of the trend cycle.
Rethink color. Dare to be different.
CIBS, the New York beauty network, celebrated our 15 years with us.
The oldest professional community in the American cosmetics industry joined us for both highlights of day one.
Founded in New York in 1948, CIBS has brought together the buyers, suppliers and manufacturers of the beauty industry for nearly eighty years, from skincare to fragrance, from ingredients to packaging. Its monthly meetings, luncheons and scholarship programs make it one of the most enduring gathering points of the New York industry.
They opened the first morning on the conference stage alongside FIT, with a reading of fifteen years of market transformation:
How the beauty landscape has evolved in the last 15 years, and how we do beauty today,
Discover those who spoke
For the 2026 edition, MakeUp in NewYork brought together more than 30 speakers: trend agencies, dermatologists, luxury economists, journalists, brands, and international experts. Each offered their own perspective on the market based on their specific field.
The Inspiration Bar, by Cosmetics Inspiration & Creation
Curating the latest global innovations
The signature Inspiration Bar of the international trend forecasting agency returned to MakeUp in NewYork, with a highly curated selection of breakthrough skincare and makeup innovations sourced from around the world.
Guided by Chief Inspiration Officer Leïla Rochet, VIP sessions ran through the agency's four innovation themes for 2026 - Superhuman Future, Hush State, Liberating Rewards, Rebel Identity - each illustrated by standout products selected for their disruptive textures, unexpected effects, forward-thinking formulations and packaging concepts.
More than a showcase, the Inspiration Bar was designed as a strategic decoding tool : bridging trend intelligence with concrete product innovation, and delivering actionable insights to inspire future development.
