Sephora has announced the 12 emerging beauty brands selected for its Sephora Accelerate 2026 cohort, the retailer’s signature incubator programme now in its tenth year. The cohort spans skincare, makeup, haircare and fragrance, and was selected from a competitive pool of Spring 2026 applicants across North America.

Who are the 2026 Sephora Accelerate cohort?

• FORTA Cosmetics (Sarah Guller & Lexie Hull) – A performance cosmetics brand co-founded by WNBA pro Lexie Hull, built for the active woman with products designed to withstand sweat, motion and long hours.
• Dealbodies (Krys (Deal) Lunardo) – Clinically-fuelled body concentrates with 4x the active strength of standard body care.
• MOWE Beauty (Tatiana Ramuth Glezer) – Skin-first makeup made for movement, breathable, sweat-adaptive and built for motion.
• BASE-K (Kristin Lim Duckworth) – A scalp-first haircare brand rooted in Korean head spa tradition, built around a daily ritual that supports healthier, denser-looking hair over time.
• Pepper Pout (Elysia Chen) – A beauty brand bringing a modern East-meets-West perspective through thoughtfully designed products that feel playful, personal and culturally fresh.
• Reference (Christina Eison) – A fine fragrance and personal beauty brand built on Syncretic Beauty™, drawing from seven global terrains to create original scent and body essentials.
• Omora Beauty Lab (Jenna Morales Ledbetter) – A clean beauty brand creating complexion-focused makeup for acne-prone and sensitive skin, formulated without pore-clogging ingredients, fragrances or common irritants.
• Everyday Chemist (Flavia Zhamo) – Skincare treated as an object of craft, formulated and handmade by a mother-daughter engineering studio.
• MORÉ (Mimi Koné) – The first premium, science-backed haircare ritual built exclusively for textured hair.
• EAUSO VERT (Tanya Gonzalez Chandhok & Faye Harris Wood) – A female and Latin-owned fine fragrance brand redefining a traditionally unchanged market by centring culture and lived experience through scent.
• Manuscript (Ye Jin & Nick Burns) – A clinical-grade hair longevity brand that treats scalp ageing like prestige skincare treats skin, addressing thinning, greying and long-term scalp health in one daily serum.
• Innae Beauty (Hannah) – Thoughtfully designed beauty products that help customers feel their best from the inside out.

Cohort members will receive access to industry experts, seasoned beauty founders and Sephora executives, alongside personalised one-on-one mentorship. They will also have the opportunity to apply for the $100,000 Sephora Beauty Grant, awarded in partnership with the Fifteen Percent Pledge. 

For more information, visit newsroom.sephora.com.