Welcome to The Metro Beauty Awards 2026

Welcome to the Metro Beauty Awards 2026!

It’s the merriest time of the year for us beauty girls! Hundreds of makeup, skincare, body care products, hairstyling picks, trendiest fragrances, and beauty tools come across our desks, and we get to play, experiment, try, test, and sample all of these amazing nominations for ourselves! In short, we do the difficult part of the job—so you don’t have to struggle the next time you go beauty shopping! 

The Metro Beauty Awards 2026This year, we decided to go back to basics while being as diverse as possible. From among hundreds of beauty nominations, the Metro team scattered its judging across many different categories, taking into consideration the many unique needs of our readers. From best makeup finds for the busy woman, best K-beauty finds for the glowing skincare girlie, to reliable J-beauty picks (the ones we often make pasabuy), standout packaging for that extra aesthetic touch in our vanities and kits, viral products that actually work, winning grooming picks for the men in our lives, and standout F-beauty products that make us extra patriotic!

Annual categories include best body care finds, best skincare finds, best hair care finds, best beauty tools, and our favorite fragrances.

Beauty & Wellness Editor Kate’s beauty journal

In this highly digitized world, beauty is one of those things that stays highly personal and, in a sense, analog. You have to physically try it, sample it on your skin, face, hair, and nails to see if it works. That’s why we at team METRO chose to go the therapeutic route of beauty journaling while trying the products out. We took to pen and paper to write our thoughts down about each product we tried, not letting important observations get forgotten. We even had a little fun with the lost art of flat lays—a very 2010s trend that became very popular in the early eras of Instagram. 

All these made the entire process very relaxing for us, which is the very reason why we fell in love with beauty in the first place. It’s all about carving out some time for onself, doing relaxing beauty rituals that take us to a journey of discover!

Team METRO’s beauty journals

In the next couple of days, we hope you get excited for the products that made this year’s list of Metro Beauty Awards winners. Whether you’re up for some stocking up on essentials, looking for a little treat, or buying a beauty present for someone special this holiday season, we promise you’ll find something here. Welcome to The Metro Beauty Awards 2026!