LAS VEGAS. The second of the five CosmoTrends directions at Cosmoprof North America was labelled Haute Sun, subtitled evolving UV protection. The label is doing polite work. What is actually happening to sun care is a format war, and the filter is no longer the battlefield.
The report's framing is that the skinification of sun care has become a baseline expectation rather than a differentiator, citing GWI. Mintel data in the same report finds that in Canada 57 percent of sunscreen users apply it more often because of concerns about ageing, not because of concerns about burning. That is a different product for a different reason, sold on a different shelf.
The number that should worry the mass shelf
The commercial signal in the report is sharper than the trend name. Circana data cited by CosmoTrends found that in the two weeks leading up to Memorial Day 2025 in the United States, dollar sales of prestige skincare sunscreens rose 11 percent while mass skincare sunscreens fell 2 percent. In the season when sunscreen sells hardest, the expensive one grew and the cheap one shrank.
Globally the report puts sun care at 15.5 billion dollars in 2025, heading to 19.4 billion by 2030 at a compound rate of 4.7 percent. Steady growth, and inside it a migration of value upward.
That is what happens when a category stops being bought as protection and starts being bought as skincare. Protection is a specification, and specifications commoditize. Skincare is an experience, and experiences hold price.
Four products, one thesis
The formulations selected for the showcase make the point better than any market forecast.
Solésence Beauty Science, from the United States, brought a dry shampoo with SPF 45+, which puts sun protection on the scalp: a part of the body that dermatologists have warned about for decades and that no cosmetic format ever solved, because nobody will rub lotion into their hair. A powder solves the behaviour, not the chemistry.
OTCM by SUNJIN Beauty Science, from South Korea, brought a broad-spectrum SPF 50 built around how invisible it is. Sun Project brought a calming stick at SPF 50, which is the reapplication format: a stick is what makes a second application at two in the afternoon plausible. TIMESAVVY, from the United States, brought a hybrid cushion sun serum, which is the same insight from the makeup side.
None of those is an advance in photoprotection. All of them are advances in whether a person will actually use the product a second time in the same day. The report names the ingredient cast now standard around the filter: zinc, witch hazel, Centella asiatica, aloe vera, niacinamide. Sunscreen has picked up a skincare ingredient list because it now has to compete for the same slot in the routine.
What this does to the shelf
For retailers the consequence is unglamorous and expensive: sun care can no longer be a seasonal endcap that appears in May and disappears in September.
If the category is bought as daily skincare, it has to live in the skincare aisle year round, adjacent to serums and moisturizers, with the same facing discipline and the same replenishment logic. Sun care sold as a summer promotion is sold on price. Sun care sold as a step in a routine is sold on texture, and it gets repurchased in November.
That also breaks the old segmentation. A tinted fluid, a stick, a serum, a spray, a powder for the scalp and a cushion compact are not variants of one SKU. They are different occasions, and the assortment logic that treats them as one line will under-buy the formats that are actually growing.
The unresolved part
Two things did not get resolved on the floor. The first is regulatory: the US filter list has been effectively frozen for years, so American brands are innovating around textures while European and Asian brands formulate with filters their US competitors cannot use. Some of the elegance on display in Las Vegas is simply not available to a domestic manufacturer.
The second is that cosmetic elegance and rigorous application are in tension. A sunscreen designed to feel like nothing encourages a thinner application than the one used to certify its SPF. The industry knows this. The floor was not talking about it.
Read our full report from the show: Cosmoprof North America 2026, where the beauty trade stopped paying for novelty.
