Ten beauty awards programs published this year have, between them, named 993 winners. We know because we added them up. Allure's Best of Beauty, now in its 30th year, accounts for 319, three of which went to Rihanna, one for each of her Fenty brands. Shop TODAY narrowed nearly 2,600 products to 120, HELLO! Canada and its sister titles crowned 125, and NewBeauty's readers picked 120. In Britain, woman&home chose 100 beauty winners and then, separately, 80 more for skin, while ELLE UK settled on 45. ELLE, Harper's Bazaar, and Who What Wear UK each named exactly 28 skin-care winners, a coincidence that proves nothing beyond the possibility that 28 is where an editor's certainty runs out.
That figure is a floor. It leaves out Good Housekeeping, People, Byrdie, Marie Claire, The Zoe Report, and Bustle, all of which ran beauty awards of their own this year, along with the Hair Awards and Ageless Beauty Awards that Shop TODAY added after its main event. The count also skips Singapore, where the beauty site CozyCot marked its 25th year by naming 2,500 Holy Grails.
Some of those winners are the same product collecting twice. Reale Actives' mandelic acid serum won at Shop TODAY and again at People, a double that Shop TODAY made a point of mentioning. At this volume, best behaves less like a ranking than like a membership, with room for a thousand members and a waiting list.
The sticker is where the money is.
Allure's editor in chief, Jessica Cruel, laid out the economics on the Glossy Beauty Podcast in September. "The seal can be licensed, so you can put it on your packaging," she said, and she added that brands can use it on social media and in ads because the magazine's research shows it helps a product sell. Allure was more specific in 2019, when it said a Best of Beauty seal lifted a product's sales by 9% on average and that more than 287 million products carrying an Allure seal were sold every year.
Every winner, in other words, is a potential license, and a magazine with 319 winners has 319 products that could carry its name into a Sephora aisle. Allure says its editors choose independently, and nothing here suggests otherwise. Nobody has to cheat for the arithmetic to reward a longer list.
Good Housekeeping, whose Seal dates to 1909, runs a more elaborate machine. Its own FAQ concedes that shoppers tend to read the Seal as a stamp of approval, though many do not realize it is backed by a limited warranty. The magazine's awards FAQs have described an entry fee for brands, from which products that already license the Seal may be exempt. In March, Hearst announced a licensing deal that puts the Good Housekeeping name on a line of bedding, every piece tested by the Institute and carrying the Seal, which leaves the magazine in the unusual position of testing products that wear its own name.
The people have spoken, and some of them were entering a raffle.
Reader awards look like the cure for all this, since nobody can accuse a hundred thousand voters of collecting a licensing fee. This year more than 207,000 readers answered the survey for Travel + Leisure's World's Best Awards, casting more than 661,000 votes across 10,088 hotels, cities, cruise lines, and other properties. Those voters were, by design, people who read Travel + Leisure and chose to fill out its survey. The magazine issued guidelines for how hotels may promote that survey, and at least one hotel brand asked guests on its own website to go and vote.
Beauty has its own version. Allure's associate beauty director has explained that the Readers' Choice ballot doubles as the entry form for an annual sweepstakes, with bundles of past winners worth about $400 each as the prizes. It is a sensible way to drive turnout, and it makes every ballot a raffle ticket.
A winner has usually beaten a smaller field than you think.
Before any list names a winner, someone decides who gets to compete. ELLE asked brands to submit entries for its Future of Beauty awards, then narrowed 320 submissions to 90 for testing and 28 for the podium. Those are serious efforts, and a product that survives one has beaten a real field. It has not beaten the cleanser whose brand never sent a sample, and it was never up against the moisturizer that has worked quietly for twenty years, because most of these programs reward what is new. ELLE calls its awards the Future of Beauty, which is admirably honest. Nobody hands out trophies for good behavior.
The winners also mean different things depending on who chose them. Good Housekeeping says its lab scientists spent seven months testing nearly 700 products for this year's awards, which is as close to proof as beauty gets. Allure's winners are chosen by editors, whose judgment is real expertise and still belongs to particular people with particular skin. Reader awards measure affection among the people who voted. A recommendation that tells you which of these it is has done you a favor, and a small graphic on a box rarely does.
Fewer people now read the fine print.
The methodology has always sat a click away from the sticker, and fewer people are clicking. A September study from Advanced Web Ranking, reported by Digiday, found that on Google searches with commercial intent, the click-through rate was 11.91% overall but only 3.51% when an AI Overview appeared. One confident sentence that folds five buying guides together may well be right, but the reader has no way to know which kind of best she was handed.
For a lipstick, an editor's enthusiasm is plenty. A mattress, an at-home laser, or a hotel that costs a week's pay deserves five minutes with the methodology, which usually sits in small type near the bottom of the page. Check who did the evaluating, what they actually used, how products entered the running, and whether the publisher earns money when you buy.
We should answer the same questions.
Modern Monclaire is a Tate & Rowe publication, and Tate & Rowe has businesses of its own, including skin care, so here is our side of the ledger. A Monclaire Guide designation cannot be bought, and no advertiser, partner, or affiliated business can purchase a ranking or a review. Every recommendation we publish will say whether it was tested, chosen by an editor, voted by readers, or sponsored. When we cover a Tate & Rowe business, the piece will say so, and that coverage will never pose as independent evaluation.
There will be a sticker on the next box you pick up, and it may well have been earned. Before it goes in the basket, it is worth asking which of this year's 993 winners you are holding and what, exactly, it beat.
Our count adds the published winner totals of ten 2026 beauty awards programs: Allure Best of Beauty (319); the HELLO! Canada, Chatelaine, Châtelaine, and FASHION Beauty Awards (125); Shop TODAY Beauty Awards (120); NewBeauty Readers' Choice Awards (120); woman&home Beauty Awards (100); woman&home Skin Awards (80); ELLE UK Future of Beauty Awards (45); ELLE Future of Beauty skin-care winners (28); Harper's Bazaar Skincare Awards (28); and Who What Wear UK Next in Beauty Awards skin-care winners (28). A product that won more than one award is counted once for each. All other figures are attributed to the publishers and outlets that reported them. A publisher's description of its own process is evidence of what it says it does, not an independent audit, and we did not conduct interviews for this piece.
