Key takeaways from Natural Products Expo West 2026
Natural Products Expo West
is where the CPG industry shows its hand. Now in its 45th year, it’s North America’s largest natural and organic products trade show. This year, more than 4,000 brands packed the Anaheim Convention Center.
TikTok-fueled startups, billion-dollar legacy brands, and everyone in between, all brands were putting their best work in front of the people who decide what gets made, what gets funded, and what gets shelf space. 70,000 attendees.
Three days. So much to learn.
Client Relationship Directors Jessica Lynch and Malori Comer walked the floor, met with clients and colleagues, and came back with tons of insight.
Here’s what we learned, from the struggles, the opportunities, and the questions worth bringing back to your team.
Protein is everywhere, but taste will decide product success.
Protein showed up in coffee, ice cream, soda, snacks, and beverages. Most developers on the floor are chasing higher numbers in smaller serving sizes. But the conversation kept coming back to the fact that delivering on taste at high levels is where products fall short. That’s where product leaders are losing sleep in this focused category.
Worth noting: creatine had a significant moment at the show, particularly in the supplement space targeting women. It’s moved well past its “gym-bag” origins and is showing up now in mainstream formats.
The developers who stood out to us were proud of their nutrition panel and had confidence in the product experience behind it.
Question for product leadership: How does your product’s taste and texture hold up at your protein targets, and do you have the data to prove it?
The GLP-1 effect is real. Brands just aren't saying so.
High protein. High fiber. Smaller serving sizes. Hydration-forward formulations. The influence of GLP-1 drugs was visible across the entire show floor. But almost no brand was calling it out by name.
That was deliberate. Product leaders are designing for that reality while keeping their positioning broad enough to speak to everyone. Fiber in particular was everywhere, with products specifically engineered for daily gut support and satiety.
Question for product leadership: Is your formulation strategy keeping pace with how your category is being reshaped, even when no one is naming it directly?
Functional ingredients are mainstream but format fit is still tripping brands up.
Creatine in snacks. Mushrooms in beverages. Adaptogens in candy. Fiber in everything. The ingredient story alone no longer turns heads on the show floor. What product leaders are now asking has become “does this ingredient make sense in this format?” and “does it change the experience in ways we haven’t accounted for?”
We noticed the brands that generated buzz were the ones where the function felt like it belonged, not like it was added to chase a trend.
Seed oil-free was another signal worth paying attention to. It was all over the floor and it’s not a niche callout anymore. For product developers still including seed oils in their formulations, the question of whether and how to address it is landing on roadmaps now.
Question for product leadership: Does your functional ingredient improve the product experience, or complicate it in ways you haven’t fully stress-tested yet?
Women's health is a serious category, and product performance has to match the promise
Hormonal health, menopause, beauty-from-within, fertility support. This dominated the floor in a way that felt different from past years. The product leaders in this space are making claims and being held to them.
We noticed the brands gaining ground were the ones whose development teams had done the work — tested the product, validated the performance, and could stand behind the label with solid insight and proof.
And for an adjacent surprise: teen and tween skincare emerged as a notable category. Even legacy brands had new lines targeting this demographic that are clean formulations, age-appropriate positioning, and a rock-solid signal that the next generation of CPG consumers is already being courted at the product development level.
Question for product leadership: Can your product back up what it’s promising, and have you validated it with enough rigor to say so confidently?
Clean label and reformulation is where brands find out what they actually have
Fewer ingredients. Simpler labels. Recognizable foods. Product developers across every category are stripping back formulations to meet the demand for transparency.
But the product leaders who’ve been through it know: reformulation is where you find out how well you understood your product in the first place. Change the wrong thing and you don’t find out until it’s too late to fix it quietly.
The brands we saw navigating this successfully came in with a clear understanding of knowing what their product delivered before they touched it.
Question for product leadership: Do you know your product well enough to know what a formulation change will cost you?
What we're taking forward
The product decisions getting made right now are consequential to their respective categories. Expo West made this clear to us. The leaders we talked to aren’t short on ambition or ideas. What they’re looking for is certainty and clarity that their products will be loved.