Spate and the NYSCC Ranked 2026's Trending Ingredients — We Ranked the Evidence

Spate's 2026 Ingredient Trends Report, released with the New York Society of Cosmetic Chemists, ranks the skincare actives rising fastest in consumer demand — PDRN, centella asiatica and beta-glucan lead the list. Demand is a signal, not a verdict. Here is that same ranking read through the evidence: what is proven, what is promising, and what is pure momentum.

What Spate actually measured

Once a year the trend-forecasting firm Spate — publishes an ingredient report with the NYSCC, and it is worth being precise about what it is. Spate does not test efficacy. It reads demand — combining behavioural signals from Google search, TikTok and Instagram into a single "popularity index," then layering Reddit conversation on top to capture how people actually talk about an ingredient. The 2026 edition, presented in an April webinar, measures one thing very well: what consumers want to know about right now.

That is genuinely useful — ingredient names have become the language consumers use to discover and judge products — but it is not the question we ask here. A rising popularity index tells you what to research. It does not tell you whether the research holds up. So below, we take Spate's fastest-rising skincare actives and set each against the evidence on its Skin Stacker glossary entry. Sometimes demand and evidence agree. Sometimes they do not, and those are the interesting rows.

The skincare ingredients rising fastest — read through the evidence

PDRN — number one by demand, moderate by evidence

Spate: fastest-rising skincare active, up 322% year on year. Polydeoxyribonucleotide topped the skincare list with a popularity index of 1.4 million and 322.3% year-on-year growth — much of it on TikTok, where it travels under its origin story as "salmon DNA." PDRN is a real mechanism: short DNA fragments that switch on adenosine A2A receptors to drive repair and feed the DNA salvage pathway. But the strongest evidence sits in injectable and post-procedure use; topical serums (roughly 0.5–2%) are promising and earlier. Here the demand is running ahead of the at-home data — worth watching, not worth overpaying for.

Centella asiatica — number two, and one of the best-supported on the list

Spate: up 147% year on year, popularity index 1.0 million. This is a row where demand and evidence agree. Centella asiatica is one of the most clinically validated plant actives in skincare — its triterpenoid saponins (asiaticoside, madecassoside, asiatic acid) carry real wound-healing, soothing and barrier-supporting data. The K-beauty wave carried it up the demand chart, but unlike most heritage-botanical trends, this one earns its place. If you are reactive or compromised, it is a sensible add.

Beta-glucan — the fastest-growing, and a safe add

Spate: up 740% year on year. Beta-glucan posted the steepest growth of the skincare actives — driven, Spate notes, by hydration and barrier interest across serums, sunscreens and moisturisers, often paired with tretinoin or azelaic acid. That tracks the evidence: it is a heavyweight humectant with strong data for hydration and soothing, and it works at or below 1%. We named it the safe add in our 2026 breakout-ingredients field guide, and the demand data agrees.

Niacinamide, salicylic acid, retinol, ceramides — the proven core, still climbing

Evidence: strong across the board. Spate's list is not all novelty. The established actives are still rising, and here demand simply confirms what the literature settled long ago. Niacinamide remains the most versatile, universally tolerated active — barrier, sebum and pigmentation in one. Salicylic acid is the gold-standard oil-soluble exfoliant for acne and congestion, and Spate flagged it rising sharply in body care for bacne and keratosis pilaris. Retinol is still the most evidence-backed OTC anti-ageing ingredient, and ceramides are the barrier lipid your stratum corneum is literally built from. If you already own these, most of the flashier list is optional.

Hypochlorous acid — the body-care breakout (+2,100%)

Spate: up 2,100% year on year in body care. The biggest surprise in the report is where hypochlorous acid landed — exploding in body and acne care, led by K-beauty brands and newcomers (Spate names Tower 28, Medicube and Briotech). Our catalogue already tracks the category through the Tower 28 SOS spray and the Purito rescue spray. The evidence supports the direction of travel: HOCl is a mild antimicrobial the immune system makes naturally, gentle enough for reactive and post-procedure skin. It is one of the rare cases where a viral ingredient is also a well-tolerated one — the trade-off being that it degrades once opened, so treat it as a use-it-fresh active, not a stockpile.

NAD+ — trending as a word, not deliverable as a cream

Evidence: strong biology, weak as a topical. NAD+ made the skincare list, and the biology is real — it is the coenzyme every cell needs for energy and repair, and it declines with age. But you cannot meaningfully raise cellular NAD+ by applying it to the skin surface; the credible route is oral precursors, which is an ingestibles conversation, not a serum one. This is the clearest demand-versus-evidence gap on the list: high search interest, low topical deliverability. Treat a topical "NAD+" claim with more scepticism than the molecule's reputation invites.

The trending ingredients we are not rating — yet

Being independent means being willing to say "we do not know." Three names high on the 2026 demand charts are not in our evidence-led catalogue, and we would rather tell you why than rate them on momentum:

• Beef tallow. Riding the ancestral-skincare wave on TikTok, it is an occlusive animal fat — plausible as a basic emollient, but the independent, peer-reviewed evidence for the facial claims being made for it is thin. We are not going to grade a trend on nostalgia.
• Volufiline. A cosmetic "contouring" active (up roughly 1,200% in Spate's data), propelled by before-and-after clips. The claims are about the appearance of fullness, and we would want independent data on finished products before putting a verdict on it.
• Spicules. The buzziest thing on the NYSCC floor — marine-sponge micro-needles pitched as "microneedling in a bottle." Mechanistically aggressive by design, which is exactly why we want controlled safety and efficacy data before recommending it to anyone.

None of these is condemned. They are simply parked until the evidence catches up with the search volume — which is the whole point of a reference that has no product to sell you.

What NYSCC Suppliers' Day added to the picture

The demand data has a supply-side mirror. NYSCC Suppliers' Day 2026 (May 19–20 at the Javits Center, under the banner "Breaking Beauty Boundaries with Science") pointed the formulation floor in the same direction: K-beauty-inspired actives — fermented extracts, centella derivatives and bifida-ferment postbiotics — alongside a heavy focus on post-procedure recovery (where PDRN and exosomes live), peptide- and RNA-based technologies, and sensory-focused sun care built around a constrained UV-filter toolbox — the same supply squeeze behind the first new US sunscreen filter in 26 years. Consumer demand and the ingredient supply chain are, for once, telling the same story: repair, barrier and K-beauty science.

How to use a trend report without getting used by it

A popularity index is a map of attention, not a map of what works. Used well, it tells you which ingredients are worth an hour of reading; used badly, it becomes a shopping list written by an algorithm. The move is to cross-reference: when demand and evidence line up — centella, beta-glucan, the proven core — you can move with some confidence. When they diverge — topical NAD+, or anything not yet in a real reference — slow down. And before any of it, check whether the active clears the 1% line, because a trend ingredient dosed below the threshold is a marketing decision, not a formulation one.

Trends are not the enemy; being rushed by them is. Spate's report is a sharp read of where attention is going in 2026. Whether that attention is deserved is a separate question — and answering it honestly, ingredient by ingredient, is the entire job here.