In its latest report, K-Beauty Goes Global, NIQ shows how Korean beauty is reshaping consumer expectations, accelerating innovation cycles and redefining competitive dynamics across the global beauty market. According to the market research firm, K-Beauty has become a rapidly growing global beauty segment, with value sales up 53% year-over-year and 131% over the past two years.
Global growth
NIQ highlights that data published by TikTok Shop shows that searches for K-Beauty on the platform increased by 125% in the UK in 2025. Across the UK, US, Spain, and Germany, value sales for K-Beauty brands on TikTok Shop rose by 430% year-over-year, highlighting the role of discovery-to-purchase platforms.
K-Beauty’s growth story is unfolding across all continents ! In Latin America, sales of Korean beauty products in value soared by 135% in Brazil and Mexico delivered growth. In North America, where e-commerce represents 76% of K-Beauty sales, sales in Canada reached USD164 million in 2025, up 57% year-over-year. In Western Europe, value growth reached 58% year-over-year, with Korean brands now accounting for around 10% of European online skincare sales, rising to 15–20% in leading markets including Italy, Spain and France.
NIQ’s analysis also points to continued momentum across the entire Asia-Pacific region, beyond Korea and China, where K-Beauty grew 27%. In the Middle East, K-Beauty e-commerce growth reached 76%.
New consumer habits
According to NIQ, K-Beauty’s rise reflects a broader change in how beauty growth is created and scaled. Formats such as sheet masks, acne patches, essences, serums and ampoules have moved from niche routines into everyday habits, while ingredient-led innovation including snail mucin, Centella Asiatica and PDRN illustrates how some Korean beauty concepts have expanded beyond specialist audiences.
Actually, K-Beauty is raising the bar for affordable, high-performance products, faster innovation cycles and commerce models that connect discovery to purchase more seamlessly.
“K-Beauty has moved beyond trend status to become one of the clearest examples of how regional beauty innovation can translate into global growth,” said Tara James Taylor, SVP, Global Beauty Personal Care Vertical, NIQ. “Its success is built on speed, cultural relevance and the ability to turn innovation into everyday habits. More importantly, it shows how beauty brands now need to read emerging regional signals earlier, understand how consumer demand is shifting, and act faster across markets. The next phase of growth will come from expansion into adjacent categories such as wellness and haircare, and from scaling across high-growth regions like Latin America and the Middle East.”
For brands, the takeaway goes beyond K-Beauty itself. According to NIQ, such a success offers one example of how innovation is becoming key in the global beauty market and how it can be regionally driven.
