Top beauty brands in the UK: who led Instagram and TikTok in H1 2026

British beauty spent the first half of 2026 in a market where reach and efficiency pulled in opposite directions. Kolsquare ranked the top 100 beauty brands in the UK by Earned Media Value across Instagram and TikTok, covering January to June 2026 with every position compared against the same period last year.

Posted On

September 29, 2026

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The top beauty brands on Instagram in the UK

L’Oréal Paris takes first place with £30.1M EMV, up one place on H1 2025, earned across 4,561 creators at a 3.6% engagement rate.

Huda Beauty climbs three places to second with £25.6M, and the strongest engagement rate on the podium at 6.1%.

Charlotte Tilbury completes the top three with £25.2M, the highest-placed UK-born brand in the ranking.

The gap worth noticing is not the one between first and second. It is that Huda Beauty converts at almost double L’Oréal Paris’s rate from a creator base roughly half the size. Presence and efficiency are not the same lever, and the ranking separates them clearly.

The top beauty brands on TikTok in the UK

Huda Beauty holds first place, climbing one further place with £18.1M EMV from 1,163 creators at a 3.5% engagement rate.

NYX UK follows in second with £16.1M.

Garnier completes the podium with £13.7M.

TikTok rewards a different profile. Huda Beauty leads here on a creator base a quarter the size of the one behind L’Oréal Paris’s Instagram total, which tells you how much of TikTok beauty value still comes from concentrated, high-performing activity rather than volume.

Segment leaders in UK beauty

On Instagram, L’Oréal Paris leads make-up, Garnier tops both skincare and haircare with £17.1M EMV, and Dior Beauty leads fragrance with £14.1M.

On TikTok, Huda Beauty leads make-up, Garnier again tops both skincare and haircare with £13.7M, and YSL leads fragrance with £6.8M.

Garnier is the quiet story of this edition: one brand leading two segments on both platforms, without appearing in the Instagram top three at all. Segment strength and overall rank are different races.

What the H1 2026 data says about UK beauty

Three patterns run through the ranking.

Scale still buys the top of the table, but it no longer buys efficiency. The biggest creator programmes in UK beauty sit at the top on absolute EMV while converting below the brands beneath them.

Platform leadership has split. No brand tops both Instagram and TikTok in the UK this half, which makes a single cross-platform creator strategy harder to defend than it was a year ago.

And UK-born brands hold a real share of the market. Brands founded in the UK account for roughly a quarter of all beauty EMV earned here on Instagram, though only one of them makes the overall top five.

Get the full ranking

The complete reports carry the full top 100 on each platform, the top 10 for make-up, skincare, haircare and fragrance, a top 20 of UK-born brands, and the Europe-wide top 100 for brands working beyond the UK. Every entry shows its creator count, content volume, engagement rate and movement on H1 2025.

See the Instagram Top 100

See the TikTok Top 100

Ranked by Earned Media Value using Kolsquare creator data, January to June 2026.

About Kolsquare

Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, offering a data-driven solution that empowers brands to scale their KOL (Key Opinion Leader) marketing strategies through authentic partnerships with top creators.

Kolsquare’s advanced technology helps marketing professionals seamlessly identify the best content creators by filtering their content and audience, while also enabling them to build, manage, and optimize campaigns from start to finish. This includes measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors.

With a thriving global community of influencer marketing experts, Kolsquare serves hundreds of customers—including Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, Lush, and Hermès—by leveraging the latest Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning technologies. Our platform taps into an extensive network of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers across 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat.

As a Certified B Corporation, Kolsquare leads the way in promoting Responsible Influence, championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations that inspire positive change.

Since October 2024, Kolsquare has become part of the Team.Blue group, one of the largest private tech companies in Europe, and a leading digital enabler for businesses and entrepreneurs across Europe. Team.Blue brings together over 60 successful brands in web hosting, domains, e-commerce, online compliance, lead generation, application solutions, and social media.