The Skin Games 2026–27 live show dates is confirmed for September 9 to 11, 2027, in Dallas, Texas. Six competition paths, over fifteen categories, and a judging panel of 40-plus credentialed professionals make up what we call the Olympics of the skincare industry, and early-bird pricing is live right now. Here’s everything you need to decide how you’re showing up.
Why Dallas, why September 2027, and why “the Olympics of skincare”
The Skin Games started in 2017 because our founder, Jennifer Rosenblum, watched estheticians do career-defining work for wages that averaged $11 to $15 an hour, in a profession with a high early-career dropout rate, and almost none of the recognition that work deserved. She built this competition because nothing like it existed yet: a place where the work itself, not a portfolio submission or a popularity vote, gets judged live, by credentialed peers, on a real stage.
Nine seasons later, that’s still the whole point. This isn’t a trade show with a competition bolted on. It’s a live-judged skills competition first, with an education program and a vendor floor built around it, not the other way around.
September 9 to 11, 2027, in Dallas is that stage for the 2026–27 season. Early-bird pricing is already live here, with a countdown running to remind you the date is closer than it feels.
Choosing your ticket
If you’re coming to watch, learn, and network rather than compete, three tiers are open to you, and all three include the same core experience: demo day, the full vendor fair, panel speaker sessions, and the Spa Tank.
Student, $60. Everything above, built for the professional still early in their career.
General, $197. The standard attendee ticket. Same access, same floor, same room.
Premiere, $499. Everything in General, plus the awards dinner and show, a swag bag valued at $500-plus, breakfast and coffee service, and a standing invitation to our monthly Mastermind on Zoom.
Bringing someone with you? The Plus-One add-on is $399.
None of these tiers is a lesser way to be here. Whether you compete or not, you’re not on the outside of this event; you’re on the floor with everyone else. If you’re deciding between General and Premiere, the honest way to think about it: General gets you the full working event, the education and the floor and the networking that’s the actual reason most people come back year after year. Premiere is for the night that caps it off, the awards dinner, the room where categories get decided in front of everyone, plus a year-round seat in the Mastermind after you go home. Neither is the “serious” ticket. They’re just two different nights.
If you’ve never done this before
Ticket in hand isn’t the same as knowing what to expect once you’re there. If this is genuinely your first Skin Games, whether you’re attending or thinking about your first entry, we wrote a plain, no-jargon walkthrough of what actually happens on the floor, what a first case study realistically takes, and why twenty-plus categories means there’s a lane for wherever you specialize, not just the categories with the biggest crowds.
If you’re competing
Competing runs separately from attending. Entry is $195 per category, and the Players Pass ($399) covers your access as a competitor; the awards ceremony dinner is ticketed on top of that, same as it is for Premiere attendees.
Seven competition paths make up the 2026–27 lineup:
Skincare, the flagship path, spanning nine subcategories from Acne and Age Management through Pigmentation and Holistic care. This is a documentation category, not a live one: you’re judged on an 8-week client case study, meaning you pick a real client, work with them over two months, and prove the result. Submission requires before-and-after photos, eight videos across the treatment window, and written documentation of your process. It rewards the work you’re probably already doing for clients; it just asks you to write it down.
Compassion, honoring nonprofit and community-facing work, where esthetics meets service. This is the category for the work that doesn’t usually get a spotlight: the pro-bono treatments, the community outreach, the client relationships built on more than a service menu.
Waxing, live head-to-head competition across Brazilian, Brow, and Leg. Judged in real time, in front of the panel, which is a different kind of pressure than a case study and its own kind of skill.
Sugaring, live competition across Brazilian, Facial, and Leg, judged on the same real-time standard as Waxing.
Brow & Lash, with both live and online paths, including Brow Lamination and Lash Lift, so you can choose the format that fits how you actually work.
Facial Massage, technique judged live, and one of the categories most first-time competitors underestimate.
If you’re building your first case study, we just refreshed our full walkthrough of what it takes, written by 2023 Esthetician of the Year Dominique Brandt and updated for this season. [LINK: How to Create an Award-Winning Case Study]
Meet the judging panel
The 2026–27 panel includes 40-plus named, credentialed professionals, led by Kelly Wolcott, our Director of Judges and a 25-year CIDESCO Diplomat. Judging runs on a point system, scored against the specific requirements published for each category, not general impressions, which is exactly why reading those requirements before you build your case study matters as much as the work itself. You can see the full current panel at /skincare-judges/. Later this season, we’re publishing a complete breakdown of exactly what this panel looks for when they score a case study, straight from the judges themselves; that’s coming from the panel directly, not just from us.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to have competed before to enter? No. New Esthetician is its own skincare subcategory specifically because we don’t expect a first-time competitor to show up with a veteran’s résumé. What you need is a real client and eight weeks.
Can I attend without competing? Yes, and it’s not a lesser way to experience the event. Student and General tickets exist specifically for professionals who want the education, the vendor floor, and the network without entering a category.
What’s the difference between competing and attending? Competing means entering a category ($195 each) with a Players Pass ($399); attending means a Student, General, or Premiere ticket. You can do both: many competitors also hold an attendee-tier ticket for the parts of the weekend, like the awards show, that aren’t included in the Players Pass alone.
How many categories can I enter? Entry is priced per category at $195 each, so it scales with however many you decide to enter.
There’s more to this season than three days in Dallas
We spent this summer building more than the event itself: a free community for estheticians (the TSG Club, opening in stages this fall), a sales and support chatbot built specifically for beauty professionals (Beauty Bot, already live), a tiered PR and visibility program (the Visibility Accelerator), and a social-media challenge run by Coach Jen. We laid all of it out in full a couple weeks ago; if you missed it, that’s the place to start.
Get in the games
Nine seasons in, this is the biggest lineup we’ve put together, and every part of it, the competition, the judges, the community built around it, exists because one esthetician decided this profession deserved a real stage. September 9 to 11, 2027, is when it happens. Early-bird pricing is live now.
Lock in your early-bird ticket → · Register to compete → · See the full 2026–27 category lineup →