What Top Makeup Brands Are Doing on TikTok in 2026

This week in makeup TikTok, blind-bag collectibles (NYX × M&Ms) and Seoul-sourced K-beauty hauls are generating the biggest spikes, while brand accounts split into two camps — founder-led storytelling versus disruptive, meme-native campaigns. A vocal deinfluencing counter-movement is gaining ground against launch fatigue, and the creators breaking through biggest are often the smallest accounts with one sharp, benefit-driven hook.

The Launches Dominating the Feed

Five product drops owned the conversation this past week. Each one used a fundamentally different playbook to cut through — and the gap between what worked and what didn't is revealing.

NYX × M&Ms: The Blind Bag That Broke Beauty TikTok

NYX leaned all the way into collectible culture with Smushy Surprize — a blind-bag lip balm collab with M&Ms featuring seven shades and one rare. The mechanic borrowed directly from the toy aisle: mystery packaging, a rip-open reveal, and a "did I get the rare one?" hook that practically scripts itself for TikTok.

The results were enormous. Multiple creator videos independently cracked a million views, and NYX's own account posted its best-performing content of the year.

2.3M views

Creator unboxing with reveal mechanic. Ripped the bag open, squeezed the product, swatched it — pure blind-bag energy from a creator with under 90K followers.

1.8M views

Honest negative review. Same product, opposite take — she applied it on-lip and hated the texture. The "de-hype" angle drove just as many views.

1.9M views

NYX's own brand account. Mimicked the creator unboxing format with polished nails and ASMR sounds, but the community could tell — slightly less organic energy.

The takeaway here isn't just "collabs work." It's that NYX imported a format from an entirely different category (blind bags / collectibles) and gave beauty creators a built-in content mechanic. The mystery element means every single unboxing is unique content — you can't saturate a blind reveal the way you can saturate a swatch video.

Notably, the negative review performed almost as well as the positive ones. That tension between hype and honest disappointment is fuel for the algorithm.

MAC Skinfinish Colourstruck: The Heritage Reformulation Play

MAC went wide — 29 shades of reformulated powder blush — and timed it to create a "match your iconic lipstick shade" narrative. The strategy leaned on MAC's legacy: names like Velvet Teddy, Candy Yum Yum, and Coppertone that already have built-in fanbases.

Creator reviews are pouring in across skin tones, with the swatching format dominating. On Instagram, the launch landed well too — @beautybybanda_ and @wing.it.beauty both got strong traction framing it as "a blush to match your fave MAC lippie."

MAC's own TikTok account (@maccosmeticsusa), however, is struggling. Their recent posts average under 1,000 views, with engagement often below 1%. The exception? Celebrity tie-ins — they posted Doja Cat's Met Gala prep and got modest traction, but it's clear the brand account hasn't found a native TikTok voice.

Rhode: Scarcity as Strategy

Rhode's Peptide Lip products continue to dominate organically. The Caramelized Banana lip treatment sold out, and creators are posting about their sadness at missing it — which only fuels the cycle.

This is the most striking example of the week: a creator with 114 followers posted a clean, close-up Peptide Lip Boost video and hit 451K views. The hook was benefit-driven and tight. The visuals were macro-level product texture shots that mirror Rhode's own branding perfectly. Follower count was irrelevant — the algorithm rewarded the content quality.

Huda Beauty: Fragrance Takes Center Stage

Huda's biggest push this week wasn't makeup at all — it was "Easy Bake Intense," a new fragrance. The launch video on the brand account hit 3.5M views with a cinematic format: founder Huda Kattan speaking to camera, intercut with ingredient B-roll (wild cherries, vanilla pods, cinnamon).

This is a notable strategic shift: a makeup brand using its built-in audience to push into fragrance. The storytelling format — mentioning 100+ formula modifications and a world-renowned perfumer — felt more like a luxury house than a social-first beauty brand.

Kosas Impressionist: The Sephora App Exclusive

Kosas is building anticipation for their Impressionist Multistick (launching May 14 on the Sephora app). The strategy is quieter: art-inspired branding, warm earthy tones, and a deliberate tease cycle. Creator @kayla.ryann posted an early review that hit 110K views, calling the cream blushes "perfect for summer."

The Format Shifts Happening Right Now

K-Beauty Hauls Are the New Brand Trip

The single biggest format trend this week is the Seoul/Olive Young shopping haul. Mikayla Nogueira's Point of View Beauty brand trip to Korea sent a wave of creators into Olive Young stores, and the resulting content is massive. Mikayla's own Olive Young haul hit 1.7M views.

What makes these different from normal hauls: creators frame them as "exclusive finds you can't get anywhere else," merging travel-vlog energy with product discovery. It's not "look what I bought" — it's "let me take you to a place you can't go."

Multiple creators on the POV Beauty trip — @demingai, @samanthataormina, @looksbyhala — all posted their own versions, each pulling six-figure views.

Separately, "full face of Korean makeup" is its own sub-trend. @demingai posted two parts that together pulled over 200K views. The format works because it's both aspirational (Korea trip) and practical (product review).

The "Full Face of New Makeup" Marathon

The most reliable mid-tier format this week is creators applying a full face exclusively with new releases. @yannalinnaa hit 115K views, @margaret_kov hit 272K (with an acne-positive angle), and multiple French creators like @mathildekst are pulling 150K+ with the same structure.

The format works because it's both a review and a tutorial simultaneously — viewers get to see how products perform in real application rather than isolated swatches.

SHEGLAM Is Owning Latin America

SHEGLAM (SHEIN's beauty brand) is running a parallel playbook almost entirely in the LatAm market. Spanish-language "full face of SHEGLAM" videos are consistently pulling 50K–900K+ views across creators from Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela.

The positioning is "accessible luxury" — bold, colorful packaging with dramatic payoff at ultra-low prices. While US/UK beauty TikTok fixates on Sephora launches, SHEGLAM is quietly building a massive audience in a market that's largely underserved by premium brands.

Drugstore Under $10 Is Recession-Core Content

With cost-of-living pressure front of mind, "drugstore makeup under $10" and "affordable dupes" content is pulling unusually strong engagement. @shelbyannbell's roundup hit 230K views with 15% engagement — that's genuinely viral organic performance from a 2M-follower account.

Creators are framing this not as "cheap alternatives" but as "smart spending" — a subtle tonal shift that resonates with audiences who feel guilty about overconsumption.

How Brand Accounts Are Playing It

The gap between brand accounts that "get" TikTok and those that don't has never been wider.

Rare Beauty: Community Over Commerce

Rare Beauty's account is doing something different from every other brand this week. Alongside standard product posts, they're running two non-product plays:

"Rare Offline" — a phone-free community dinner series in NYC, filmed with intentionally shaky, BTS-style footage that feels like a friend's Instagram story, not a brand activation.

Mental health impact stats — positioning their bestselling blush as "the blush that makes a difference" with $30M+ raised for youth mental health. The carousel-style post hit 90K views.

The Selena Gomez factor remains enormous — her Ulta visit alone pulled 927K views — but the brand is clearly building identity beyond just the founder.

e.l.f.: The Disruptor Playbook

e.l.f. is operating on a completely different wavelength. Their "Vanity Vandals" campaign — a guerrilla-style, cinematic mini-series — hit 28M views. They're also sponsoring the International Dance League and creating DIY craft content around repurposing product empties.

Their new Glass Slick Serum Stick launch post uses macro texture shots and punchy benefit text, mimicking the format of a viral creator review rather than a brand announcement.

The throughline: e.l.f. posts content that could plausibly come from a creator, not a corporate account.

NYX: All-In on One Moment

NYX has essentially dedicated their entire feed to the M&Ms collab. Of their last 10 posts, 7 are Smushy Surprize content. It's working — the unboxing ASMR video hit nearly 2M views — but it means the brand account has no identity beyond the collab right now. Their non-M&Ms posts (body care, cultural humor) are averaging 2–7K views.

MAC: The Legacy Brand Struggling to Translate

MAC's US TikTok account is the cautionary tale. Despite a massive blush launch (29 shades!) and a Met Gala moment with Doja Cat, their posts are averaging under 5K views with sub-5% engagement. The content feels like repurposed retail marketing — product grids, swatch carousels, influencer clips that don't feel native.

The contrast with creator-generated MAC content is stark: @beautybybanda's creator review of the same blush launch hit 90K views on TikTok. MAC's own Doja Cat Met Gala post? 648 views.

The Counter-Movement: Deinfluencing Is Back

Amid all the launches, a vocal deinfluencing camp is gaining traction. @abidaunton is the most consistent voice — posting multiple videos this week about project pans, makeup decluttering, and explicitly telling her audience "we do not need anymore shiny lip products."

Her engagement rates (8–13%) are consistently higher than most of the launch-hype content, suggesting the audience for this "anti-haul" perspective is devoted and growing. Other creators like @greeneggsandglam and @patrickkpinedaa are joining in with "hot takes" and honest reviews that push back against overconsumption.

This isn't killing the launch cycle — but it's creating a parallel content lane that brands should watch. The creators succeeding here are building trust equity that will make their endorsements (when they do endorse something) far more powerful.

What This All Means