Beauty’s Big Acne Bust

January 23, 2026

Skin care brands are set­ting their sights on acne, and for good reason.

Data from Cir­cana shows that in 2025, acne treat­ment products reached $1.7 bil­lion in sales in the mass mar­ket, up 5 per­cent versus the year prior.

The cat­egory only grew 1 per­cent by com­par­ison in prestige skin care, but that seg­ment as a whole was flat, chal­lenged by myriad factors includ­ing a value-con­sumer shift toward lower-priced products.

Still, demand for acne products is grow­ing.

Data from Spate shows that in 2025, U.S. Google searches for “acne treat­ment” grew about 19 per­cent to 424,000 aver­age monthly searches. Searches for “acne scar treat­ment” and “pimple patch” also grew 32 per­cent and 23 per­cent, respect­ively, and “Tret­in­oin cream” grew double-digits in terms of both Google searches and aver­age weekly Tik­Tok views.

On Tik­Tok Shop, sales of acne treat­ment products exceeded $20.9 mil­lion in 2025, data from Charm.io shows, peak­ing in Novem­ber when the cat­egory drove $2.8 mil­lion in sales in a single month.

Against this back­drop, Hims & Hers cofounder Jack Abra­ham launched a new com­pany, called Indomo, with plans to bring an at-home cor­ticos­t­er­oid acne injec­tion to the mar­ket pending FDA approval, and in Novem­ber der­ma­to­lo­gist Amy Wechsler opened an acne-focused New York clinic offer­ing walk-in con­sulta­tions, ster­oid injec­tions and extrac­tions.

All this to say, the arms race to bring new-to-mar­ket acne solu­tions is under­way. And a wave of launches, includ­ing Bene­fit Cos­met­ics’ latest two-step pore “degunker,” and Haruharu Won­der’s acne­friendly PDRN serum, look to con­tinue the momentum