The booming GLP-1 space was built on weekly injections. In 2026, new obesity pills will push the market into its next chapter.

Patients are already getting their hands on the first GLP-1 pill for obesity from Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk — a once-daily drug that shares the same brand name as its popular injection Wegovy. A GLP-1 pill from the company’s chief rival Eli Lilly isn’t far behind, with a U.S. approval expected within months. 

For some people, pills may serve as a more convenient — and potentially cheaper — alternative to today’s blockbuster injections. The cash prices of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill range from $149 to $299 per month, depending on the dose, which is slightly less than the newly lowered cash prices of injections. 

While the pills aren’t expected to bring more weight loss than weekly shots, based on separate clinical trials, some health experts say expanding the range of treatments could still be a major win for patients.

Pills could attract new patients to seek obesity treatment for the first time, expanding the broader weight loss and diabetes drug market and potentially boosting sales for Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. The new users may include people who are afraid of needles, as well as patients who could benefit from existing injections but don’t view their condition as severe enough to warrant a weekly shot.

“I think that there are a lot of people out there who have never tried these GLP-1 drugs and are maybe waiting for the pills to come out,” said Dr. Eduardo Grunvald, medical director of the UC San Diego Health Center for Advanced Weight Management. “It’s kind of a natural preference for some people and even some prescribers.” 

“Secondly, if you have to pay out of pocket, the pills are going to be a bit less expensive than the injections, so that’s another reason,” he said. 

It’s unclear exactly how many people are currently using GLP-1s in the U.S., especially for obesity. But around 1 in 8 adults said they were taking a GLP-1 drug to lose weight or treat another chronic condition as of November, according to a poll from health policy research organization KFF.

Now, pills are emerging as the next battleground for Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, which established the GLP-1 space that some analysts say could be worth almost $100 billion by the 2030s. In August, Goldman Sachs analysts forecast that pills could capture roughly 24% — or about $22 billion — of the global weight-loss drug market by 2030.

Here’s how obesity pills could reshape the space.

Those users will also be able to access the starting dose of both pills for $149 per month through President Donald Trump‘s direct-to-consumer website, TrumpRx, under a deal both companies struck with his administration in November. 

Obesity injections have long been hard for patients to get, due in part to spotty insurance coverage and list prices of roughly $1,000 per month. Both Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have moved to address those concerns by cutting cash prices for their injectable drugs to less than half that amount.

Eli Lilly in December said the highest doses of single-dose vials of Zepbound will cost $449 per month for cash-paying patients, while Novo Nordisk in November said nearly all doses of Wegovy will cost $349 per month in cash. 

Those prices are closer to the cost of Novo Nordisk’s pill, which may still be expensive for some. But Grunvald said the roughly $150 monthly difference between the highest doses of Zepbound and Novo’s pill “could be a big difference for many people” willing to pay out of pocket.

Patients with insurance coverage for Novo Nordisk’s oral drug can pay as little as $25 per month for the treatment. But pills likely won’t move the needle to boost insurance coverage of GLP-1s for obesity in the U.S. 

The direct-to-consumer cash prices of Novo Nordisk’s oral drug are likely “significantly less” than what employers and middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers would pay to cover the drugs, said John Crable, senior vice president of Corporate Synergies, an insurance and employee benefits brokerage and consultancy.

Crable said it is unclear how much the pill will ultimately cost payers such as employers since those prices are not publicly disclosed. But if they mirror injection costs — often higher than $1,000 per month — employers may be reluctant to add the drug to their formularies, he said. 

Some companies that already offer coverage of obesity injections could add the pills this year. But Crable said some employers have actually dropped coverage of GLP-1s for obesity in 2026 due to their high costs.

“I don’t see employers being highly motivated to add what is probably going to be another high volume, very high cost drug to their formulary when the direct-to-consumer pricing for it is so much cheaper,” Crable said. 

Drugmakers have tried to make a case that patients using injections can switch easily to oral drugs. Eli Lilly in December released data showing that patients who initially took Wegovy or Zepbound shots maintained the majority of their weight loss after switching to the company’s pill. 

But Apovian, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said cost would be the only real reason to move patients who are doing well on injections to a pill.

“If the [cash price] is similar, I always prefer the injectables because I believe that the weight loss is better and the side effects are less,” she said.

Apovian said she wants to see real-world data on how pills perform compared with injections, but separate late-stage trials already offer some clues.

Zepbound has shown average weight loss of more than 20% in late-stage studies. That’s higher than results seen with both the Wegovy injection and pill as well as Eli Lilly’s oral drug in separate trials. 

In those same studies, about 7% of patients or less stopped treatment due to side effects from the Zepbound and Wegovy injections.

The Wegovy pill showed similar discontinuation rates, while about 10.3% of patients taking the highest dose of Eli Lilly’s oral drug stopped treatment because of side effects.

Leerink Partners analyst David Risinger said patients with obesity who need to lose a larger percentage of their body weight will likely stick with injections, unless they have a fear of needles.

Pills, he said, could primarily attract new patients who are overweight or mildly obese and want to achieve only “modest” weight loss.

Some patients currently using weekly injections may try pills, Risinger added, though not all will find a daily oral option more convenient.

That includes Karen Galante, 42, of Horsham, Pennsylvania, who is taking a compounded version of semaglutide – the active ingredient in Wegovy – which she said is priced similarly to Novo Nordisk’s new pill.

Galante said she does not plan to switch.

“It’s hard enough for me to remember to take my vitamins every day,” she said. “I like the set-it-and-forget-it of taking one shot a week.” 

There are no head-to-head studies directly comparing that pill with Eli Lilly’s. In one of Eli Lilly’s late-stage trials, the highest dose of its pill helped patients lose 12.4% of their body weight on average at 72 weeks. 

Despite that difference in efficacy, Risinger said the two pills are viewed as promoting roughly similar levels of weight loss. Some patients may also not need to take the highest dose of either pill, he added. 

In an August note, Goldman analysts said they expect Eli Lilly’s pill to have a 60% share — or roughly $13.6 billion — of the daily oral segment of the market in 2030. They expect Novo Nordisk’s oral semaglutide to have a 21% share — or around $4 billion — of that segment. The analysts said they expect the remaining 19% slice to go to other emerging pills.

Other drugmakers are racing to bring their own oral options to the market, including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Structure Therapeutics and Viking Therapeutics. 

Risinger highlighted Structure’s daily oral GLP-1, which will enter phase three trials later this year. Shares of Structure soared more than 100% on Dec. 9 after it released midstage data showing that its pill, aleniglipron, helped patients with obesity lose more than 11% of their weight at 36 weeks, when adjusted for placebo. 

Additional trial data showed that a higher dose of the pill could deliver greater efficacy – more than 15% weight loss – surpassing the results seen with the highest dose of Eli Lilly’s orforglipron. Still, the tolerability data, or how well patients tolerated Structure’s treatment, appeared to be worse than that of Eli Lilly’s pill. 

In a release at the time, Structure CEO Raymond Stevens said the pill could be “potentially best-in-class” for an oral small-molecule GLP-1. 

Risinger said he expects that pill and another oral GLP-1 from AstraZeneca could launch as soon as late 2028. 

He said potential pills that are taken weekly, as opposed to daily, and have “compelling profiles could tilt the balance more towards orals” in the market. 

Risinger pointed to privately held Verdiva Bio, which is developing several oral peptide treatments designed to be taken once a week. That company has an ongoing phase two trial on an oral GLP-1. 

It often starts small.

A dab of concealer. A tinted moisturizer. Maybe a brow gel that goes from borrowed to bought. For many men, like Daniel Rankin, makeup has transformed from something taboo into a tool to make them look less tired and more put together.

“I remember thinking, ‘Am I really doing this?'” Rankin, a 24-year-old advertising agent from New York who likes to shop at Sephora, told CNBC. “But once I tried it, it just became normal.”

In front of bathroom mirrors and in gym locker rooms, more men are now adding cosmetics to their routines, industry experts told CNBC. The men’s makeup market is now one of the most lucrative — and largely untapped — growth opportunities left in beauty, and specialty retailers like Ulta Beauty and Sephora along with big-box companies like Target and Walmart all see opportunity.

“Men’s beauty is one of the last categories left where brands can likely still see easy double-digit growth potential simply by showing up,” said Delphine Horvath, professor of cosmetics and fragrance marketing at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Men’s grooming sales in the United States topped $7.1 billion in 2025, up 6.9% year over year, according to market research firm NielsenIQ. The global market was valued at $61.6 billion in 2024 and projected to surpass $85 billion by 2032, with the biggest growth driven by the skin-care sector, according to Fortune Business Insights.

Much of the momentum is coming from Gen Z.

In the U.S., 68% of Gen Z men ages 18 to 27 used facial skin-care products in 2024, a sharp jump from 42% just two years earlier, according to data from market intelligence firm Mintel.

“This is no longer niche,” said Linda Dang, CEO of Canada-based Asian beauty retailer Sukoshi. “Men are forming routines, that usually starts at skin care and then expands further, they are no longer just buying random products. That’s what makes this market so valuable.”

Unlike one-off grooming purchases, makeup encourages repeat use and experimentation. A man who starts with concealer often adds primer, setting powder or tinted SPF over time, said Farah Jemai, global marketing associate lead at beauty brand Unleashia.

“When men discover makeup that works, they don’t use once and never again,” Jemai told CNBC. “They restock.”

Market researchers estimate that in 2022, about 15% of U.S. heterosexual men ages 18 to 65 were already using cosmetics and makeup, while another 17% said they would consider it, according to Ipsos. Industry experts say those figures are likely higher in 2026.

Openness to cosmetics has grown, as the share of U.S. men who say they never wear makeup has fallen from more than 90% in 2019 to about 75% in 2024, Statista survey data show.

Ulta Beauty and and Sephora have begun integrating men’s complexion products into gender-neutral, skin care-first displays rather than having “Men’s” aisles. Those gender-specific displays can feel intimidating or stigmatizing to some men, Horvath said.

Big-box retailers like Walmart and Target have also expanded their men’s cosmetics or grooming offerings.

For example, in 2025, Target partnered with online streaming collective AMP, Any Means Possible, to launch TONE. The men‑forward personal care brand debuted in Target stores nationwide in July, leveraging AMP’s massive Gen Z male following across YouTube and Twitch.

Online — where much of the growth and discovery is happening — many beauty brands are pouring money into influencer partnerships to increase engagement and sales on TikTok Shop and Amazon.

“So many brands are now putting most of their marketing budget into influencer marketing to meet people where they already are online and make it easier to click ‘buy,'” said Janet Kim, a vice president at K-beauty brand Neogen.

Others are leaning into digital education to teach men what different items do.

The brand War Paint sells makeup products like concealer pens, tinted moisturizers and anti-shine powders that feature QR codes on the packaging. Scanning them launches video tutorials explaining what each product does — without forcing customers to ask questions in a store.

“The biggest barrier isn’t price, it’s uncertainty,” Dang said. “Men want to know what a product does and how to use it without feeling awkward.”

But the path to mass adoption isn’t guaranteed.

Industry analysts warn that social stigma remains high and inflation threatens to curb spending on experimental, nonessential goods. Retailers also face a steep learning curve: It is difficult to scale a market when the core customer doesn’t know how to use the product.

In 2016, CoverGirl made history by appointing then 17-year-old YouTuber James Charles as its first-ever “CoverBoy,” placing a male face on a mass-market cosmetics brand for the first time.

Still, beauty conglomerates largely focused on women until recently, Sukoshi’s Dang said. Now, a broader cultural reset around masculinity is taking place and companies are racing to monetize it, FIT’s Horvath said.

Social media has been the single biggest accelerant, Dang said.

On TikTok and Instagram, male creators post step-by-step makeup routines, product breakdowns and before-and-after results that often emphasize subtle changes rather than dramatic looks. Hashtags tied to men’s grooming and makeup have amassed billions of views, with #mensgrooming alone surpassing 26 billion views on TikTok.

“TikTok democratized the ‘how-to,'” said Dang. “You don’t have to ask your sister or guess anymore. You just scroll, see a guy who looks like you fixing his acne in 30 seconds, and click ‘buy.’ It removed the gatekeepers.”

Gen Z men are also more comfortable rejecting rigid gender categories and more skeptical of marketing that frames products as inherently masculine or feminine, Horvath said.

At the same time, makeup has increasingly been folded into a broader wellness and optimization culture — sometimes referred to as “looksmaxxing” — that includes fitness tracking, supplements, hair-loss prevention and longevity routines.

“Many men have started framing grooming and, for some, makeup as maintenance, not vanity,” Horvath said. “That reframing removes stigma and unlocks spending.”

Celebrity influence has further accelerated adoption, with stars like Harry Styles, Brad Pitt and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson launching their own skin care and makeup brands, mirroring the trend of celebrity saturation largely seen in spirits.

Johnson’s brand Papatui, which launched at Target in 2024 and spans skin, hair, body and tattoo care, was created in response to ongoing questions about his grooming regimen. It now competes directly with legacy names like Clinique, L’Oréal and Kiehl’s.

Brands like War Paint and Stryx argue that men need products designed for their thicker, oilier skin, and packaged in masculine, tool-like containers that feel at home in a gym bag.

But Gen Z consumers are increasingly gravitating toward gender-neutral brands like LVMH co-owned Fenty Beauty, The Ordinary and Haus Labs. For them, labels that say “For Men” can feel outdated or even patronizing, Horvath said.

“In ten years, I don’t think we’ll be talking about ‘men’s makeup’ anymore,” Horvath said. “We will just be talking about makeup. The gender binary in beauty is dissolving, and the sales data is finally catching up to the culture.”