Beauty brands have been waiting for this sunscreen moment

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved bemotrizinol (BEMT) as a sunscreen filter on June 9, the entire Ultra Violette office in Melbourne, Australia, erupted screaming. Stateside, the La Roche-Posay group chat exploded with messages and memes, including that Friends GIF of Rachel and Phoebe jumping for joy. 

To the average shopper, this may not seem like a big deal, but for skincare companies, it’s the culmination of a yearslong hope for access to an ingredient that could reshape the U.S. sunscreen market.

“It’s a door crack to what could be, to what the industry could look like,” says Ultra Violette cofounder Ava Chandler-Matthews. “The U.S. is very far behind in sunscreen innovation, and it’s dealing with outdated technology. The rest of the world is in the future.” 

Before BEMT, the FDA hadn’t approved a sunscreen filter in 27 years, and only a handful of chemical and mineral filters are commonly used. Bemotrizinol—a broad-spectrum chemical filter that works at lower concentrations and breaks down slowly time—can be easier to formulate with and is helpful for creating lighter sunscreens that don’t leave a white cast or heavy residue on the skin. Now it’s at last available in the U.S., the largest national skincare and cosmetics market in the world.

“Historically, creating very high [sun] protection in the U.S. while also achieving an ultralight, invisible, elegant texture has involved compromising,” Naked Sundays founder and CEO Samantha Brett says. “[BEMT] gives our chemists and formulators another extremely useful tool to build strong UVA and UVB protection while still focusing on wearability.”

U.S. SPF products, in fact, have historically been so bad in comparison that they’ve sparked social media trends of people shopping for sunscreen when they’re traveling abroad, whether at French pharmacies, Olive Young in Korea, or Don Quijote in Japan. This is not to discount the increasingly great formulas available in the U.S., but they have been restricted due to the smaller roster of filters available.

Many brands, who had a hint that BEMT would be approved, wanted to be proactive. Some started quietly working on BEMT-involving sunscreen formulations as much as a couple of years prior in order to quickly bring a product to market soon after its FDA approval. When Ultra Violette started preparing to launch in the U.S., it hired a project manager to investigate the possible approval of BEMT.

“When we were formulating to launch in the U.S., we had two pipelines of product: one with bemotrizinol and one without,” Chandler-Matthews says. “We didn’t actually know if it would happen, but we were betting the house on the fact that it would.”

Ultra Violette hit U.S. shelves in spring 2025, and just more than a year later, the ingredient was approved. Its first BEMT sunscreen for the U.S. market, Unblock SPF 50, launches September 1. It uses BEMT and zinc oxide as filters while incorporating ingredients to address breakout-prone skin concerns. 

As more brands get ready to bring their first formulas to market, a U.S. sunscreen glow-up is on the horizon. Ahead, what it’s like doing R&D with BEMT, the difference it makes in a formula, and what’s coming this fall.

What is BEMT, and is it easier to work with?

Bemotrizinol starts as a fine, white powder before it’s incorporated into a formula. And this is one big reason why chemists love working with it.

It’s “easier to handle” and a “pleasure to formulate with,” Stephen Lynch, head of skincare valorization for L’Oréal Groupe North America, tells Fast Company.

A powder ingredient can be more straightforward to deal with in the lab than a liquid filter. La Roche-Posay, who Lynch formulates for under L’Oréal, has many years of experience with the ingredient and BEMT sunscreens in other parts of the world. La Roche-Posay plans to launch its debut BEMT formula for the U.S. around Thanksgiving.

Another advantage of working with BEMT? You need less of it. “It’s highly efficient at lower concentrations, so it lightens the chemical load in terms of the makeup of the sunscreen,” Chandler-Matthews says. The ingredient has a usage limit of 6%, whereas common filters like zinc oxide or homosalate can be used up to 25% and 15%, respectively.

Only one company is manufacturing the U.S.-available BEMT for now. DSM-Firmenich—a Swiss-Dutch company that’s also behind some designer label perfumes and popular fragrance molecules—is the exclusive BEMT supplier for 18 months after the first BEMT product hits the U.S. market.

“The financial investments needed to get a new filter approved by the FDA fall solely on the company that is executing the clinical studies necessary to support approval, which, in this case, was DSM,” says Colin Pinto, product development VP of skin health North America for Kenvue (which owns Neutrogena, which has BEMT products coming mid-September). “The FDA rewards them for this investment by granting an 18-month exclusivity to supplying the U.S. market with the BEMT sun filter.”

After that period is over, other manufacturers can start supplying the raw ingredient to brands selling in the U.S.

BEMT’s approval comes after the Supporting Accessible, Flexible, and Effective (SAFE) Sunscreen Standards Act was signed into law in November 2025. Its main goal is to quicken and streamline how the FDA reviews and approves active ingredients for sunscreen to help modernize the industry in the U.S. With BEMT through the door, momentum could build for the approval of additional filters.

What it’s like formulating with BEMT, according to the experts

As much as chemists like working with it, BEMT takes finesse in order to get a good result. For starters, the powder must be solubilized by oil. When this isn’t done properly, it can crystallize.

“It’s about using the right solubilizers and enough of them,” Chandler-Matthews explains. “Some other traditional UV filters can help, but other times you have to add specific ingredients,” like emollients and other fast-spreading oils that can also help formulations feel pleasant on the skin.

BEMT’s solubility isn’t free of its own challenges, Pinto says. “It can unlock high-SPF, highly wearable formulas with a lighter, more elegant feel, but it also requires careful formulation work to ensure long-term stability, durability, and performance, especially when targeting water-resistant properties,” he says.

Getting the optimal ratio of SPF filters and skincare ingredients takes a lot of trials and, thus, time. “Formulating sunscreens is one of the most challenging types of formulation of any product that we offer,” Lynch says.

La Roche-Posay reportedly took at least two years to land on a final formula for its first BEMT sunscreen for U.S. distribution. Similar to how Ultra Violette prepared formulas in case BEMT was approved, Brett did something similar at Naked Sundays, which is preparing to launch its formula in early 2027. 

“We didn’t want to wait until approval and then start from zero as SPF formulation and testing takes many months, if not years,” she says.

How brands plan to get the average U.S. sunscreen shopper to care

For now, U.S. shoppers may not explicitly start asking for “BEMT sunscreens,” but brands are thinking carefully about how to get people excited about the ingredient, without getting too technical or science-y in a way that scares shoppers away.

For La Roche-Posay, there’ll be an emphasis on educating shoppers, including “working with our retail partners, who also see this as a huge priority,” says Grace Riggenbach, general manager of La Roche-Posay USA. “We’re working hand in hand with them to drive in-store education, which is still one of our top awareness tools for consumers.” Expect related brand activations, too.

Regardless of whether shoppers actually start seeking out BEMT products, Brett does foresee consumers developing “an increased trust in U.S. sunscreens that typically wasn’t there” as formulas get better and easier to wear. “The next era of sunscreen in the U.S. will be less about convincing people they need SPF,” she says, “and much more about making SPF so good that they don’t want to skip it.”

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