Skincare has always chased two goals – gravity-defying lift and ice-rink smoothness. But the 2025 skincare trends feel like they are more focused on intuiting what your skin actually needs. They lean on science – even more on ‘unsexy’ ingredients – while pulling off a brilliant vanishing act on dullness, sensitivity and snowflake-like dry skin.
Most are also linked via a common thread: longevity. Having moved from the wellness sphere into beauty, the longevity movement is anchored in the idea of living better — and looking younger — for longer.
For this reason, much of the tech in the latest skincare drops is about improving your skin cells’ own collagen-producing efforts. I’ve also noticed the language used around them is increasingly moving away from battle-worn terms such as ‘sloughing’, ‘perfecting’ and ‘fighting’ to ‘healthy’, ‘soothing’ and ‘repairing’.
It’s a valuable reminder that no matter how many (or few) steps in your routine – or your budget – the beating heart of any skincare routine is being kind to yourself and carving out a little me-time to take a relaxing breath.
Here we pull back the curtain on the 2025 skincare trends that promise a next-level glow:
1.Skin cycling is back – but with fermented ingredients
Skin cycling became a viral sensation back in 2022, the idea being that you divide your week into two active nights (using AHA exfoliation the first night, retinol on the second) and two nights of recovery.
While thick, unctuous barrier-repairing creams were your go to here, “2025 is taking it a step further by incorporating fermented ingredients, a K-beauty staple, into routines,” Hayley Walker, Justmylook’s skincare expert, reports.
And because fermentation involves using yeast or bacteria to break down natural actives into smaller molecules for better absorption, there’s less chance of skin sensitivity. “These ingredients improve the skin’s microbiome, reducing irritation and dryness,” she adds.
Joanna Ellner, a former beauty editor and founder of Reome, a bio-tech skincare brand powered by fermented ingredients, is also on board with this trend. Some customers, she says, are already using the Active Recovery Broth “as a skin drink 3 or 4 times per week.”
2. The new skincare brag? ‘Longevity’
Two movements characterised the beauty landscape last year. The first was the TikTok-viral ‘unsexy beauty products’ trend – which is just another way of saying they get the job done without fancy scents or frilly packaging.
The other was ‘longevity’ with ingredients and tech that slow down how you age and nudge cells to produce more collagen.
Both movements are still gaining steam in 2025, but now “ingredients with lifelong benefits” are also bubbling up on the the skincare scene, according to the SEEN Group‘s 2025 trends report. It spotlights trusty favourite glycerin, but ectoin and beta-glucans – a.k.a hyaluronic acid’s not so glossy, but equally hydrating, cousins – also tap into this trend.
A more high-tech approach comes from The L’Oréal Group. Its Cell BioPrint was unveiled this week and involves taking a facial tape strip, sticking it on your cheek to collect skin cells and putting it in a buffer solution, which is then inserted into a cartridge for the gadget to analyse.