There’s something suspiciously comforting about makeup that jiggles. Maybe it’s the visual ASMR. Maybe it’s the tactile thrill of poking your highlighter like it’s dessert. Maybe we’ve all simply given up and decided we want our beauty routines to feel like a playground. We're talking about jelly makeup.
Jelly textures haven't just wobbled onto the scene, with early launches from Milk Makeup, Glow Recipe, and the K-beauty world, their popularity hasn’t faded. If anything, the jelly takeover has accelerated. In 2025, the beauty aisle looks like a soft-serve machine left running: blushes that bounce, balms you can poke, creams that are whipped up in their jars.
Platforms like TikTok and Instagram have turned texture into currency. A formula that ripples or springs back under a fingertip isn’t just fun; it’s built for looping videos, instant gratification, and easy virality. (After all, you don’t need a detailed review when you can watch someone press their thumb into a jelly blush and see it boing back into shape.)
But there’s a deeper shift, too. Beauty has gotten more textural. We’ve slid from gel to jelly—from the crisp, minimalist gels of early-2010s skincare to formulas that jiggle, bounce and practically dare you to touch them. Consumers are craving sensory experiences, not just visual ones. In an increasingly digital world, textures offer a rare physical delight: the cooling glide of a jelly highlighter, the squish of a cheek tint, the soft bounce of a dewy balm. These aren’t just products; they're stress balls, playthings, small doses of serotonin you can smear onto your face.
There’s a bigger story here, too. Beauty innovation today doesn’t move in waves; it ripples outward from whatever goes viral. Where there’s a breakout texture, there are a hundred near-copies in production before the original has even cooled. Dupe culture isn't inherently villainous. If a brilliant product becomes more accessible because someone else reverse-engineered it for half the price, that's a public service. But there’s a difference between riffing on a good idea and strip-mining it. Inspiration versus plagiarism.
Skincare has been here before: Skinceuticals’ famous vitamin C serum once sat atop the world like a smug little emperor, patent-protected and $180 a pop. Now, with that patent expired, it's open season for every brand with a pipette and a dream.
Makeup may not have the same kind of patent wars, but the cycle feels familiar. Something new gets invented, goes viral, gets duplicated, and becomes a category. Jelly textures—irresistible, playful, immediately Instagrammable—were inevitable.
In the end, everything is jelly. Our makeup, our brain after a long week. Might as well lean in. If you're ready to dive face-first into the jelly multiverse, here’s where to start:
Milk Makeup Cooling Water Jelly Tint
An internet-breaking moment disguised as a blush stick. Milk’s Cooling Water Jelly Tints feel cool, wet and somehow alive against the skin, delivering sheer, juicy colour with a glide. The texture makes you want to keep swiping. Part sensory thrill, part nostalgia trip for anyone who ever loved a jelly sandal or a water balloon. In the world of textures that beg for a reapplication, this one fired the starting pistol.
M·A·C Glow Play Blush
Soft like memory foam, with just enough rebound to make you poke it again, even though you’re an adult with things to do. Glow Play bridges powder, cream and jelly without committing fully to any category; a true shapeshifter. Its hybrid texture delivers a diffused, second-skin flush that looks like your skin just got happier, not heavier.
Kay Beauty Jelly Lip & Cheek Wand
Fresh to the scene but already leaving fingerprints all over the trend. This one delivers a sheer, jelly-like tint to lips and cheeks with a popsicle-inspired applicator that feels playful but precise. Less a gloss, more a glaze and entirely engineered for the dewy skin agenda.
CHANEL LES BEIGES WATER-FRESH BLUSH
Tiny suspended pigment droplets swim in watery serum, bursting as you blend. Less traditional jelly, more liquid illusion, but it scratches the same itch for skin that looks moist, supple, almost breathing. Proof that in 2025, “good coverage” is less interesting than “good movement.”
Violette_FR Bisou Jelly
A French-girl favourite with a jelly balm formula that melts on contact. The tinted core adds just enough colour, while the clear jelly casing delivers hydration and gloss in equal measure. It's a lip tint, but moodier.
ColourPop Cosmetics Jelly Much Shadow
Like dipping your finger into a pot of liquid stardust. This water-based, jelly-textured shadow delivers high-impact shimmer with a single swipe. No fallout, no flaking, just a smooth, cooling veil of colour that sets like a dream.
Sheglam Crystal Jelly Glaze Stick
A translucent glow stick that lends cheeks, eyes and lips the kind of wet-look sheen usually reserved for editorials. Balmy but breathable, it offers the high-gloss of a glass skin finish, minus the stickiness.
Huda Beauty Glowish Super Jelly Lip Balm
This one’s for the balm loyalists who secretly crave a little drama. Huda’s Glowish Super Jelly Lip Balm isn't here to just sit pretty in your bag—it gives sheer colour, real hydration, and a mirror-gloss finish that leans more “glass skin” than “natural tint.” With a jelly-soft core and skin-loving ingredients, it straddles the line between skincare and statement. Think lip balm with a main character complex.
