Beauty Therapist Competition

Overview

A beauty therapist (intermediate) is skilled in the most popular salon treatments offered including waxing, manicure/pedicure, eye treatments, facials and makeup.

The competition focuses on the role and tasks of a beauty therapist. This includes carrying out a range of therapy services which reflect both current and traditional beauty therapy treatments including facial treatments, make-up, manicure, pedicure, lash and brow treatments, health and safety and customer service.

See how competing helped Gold Medallist and Best in Nation Holly-Mae succeed.

The skills you need to demonstrate

Professional demeanour
Safe working practices
Professional attitude
Effective interaction with the client
High level of skill and dexterity
Management of time allocation
Ergonomic working methods.

Useful resources

Prepare for competition success

Our library of endorsed local skills competition briefs ‘benchmarking assessments’ helps prepare learners to build technical skills, productivity, and mindset competencies for national competition success, including employability progression pathways.

Paired with the benchmarking tracker, educators can record progress, identifying strengths and target areas for improvement. Together, they offer a reliable, standards-led framework, creating a sustainable model for skills development that supports educators to empower learners to be competition ready.

Access on the Learning Lab

Entry criteria

This is an individual competition.
Organisations are advised to enter up to 5 competitors at the entry stage. Use the pre-competition activity to shortlist internally at your institution before entering competitors into the main competition.
Entries will be accepted from competitors who are enrolled in a programme of study working towards Beauty Therapy Level 2 in the last 12 months.
Competitors must be familiar with the core competencies below.
Model used must NOT be tutors or staff from the competitors college institution.
If an institution has a large number of competitors that advance to the National Qualifiers, each organisation will be required to nominate two primary competitors and one reserve per campus. This approach ensures fair representation for all institutions, regardless of their size.

How it works

1. Register

Registrations open on Monday 2 March 2026, 9am and will close Friday 27 March 2026, midnight.

2. Entry stage

Entry Stage will be released on Monday 3 March with a final deadline of 25 April, 2025.

3. National Qualifiers

Qualifies to be held between May and June 2026

Coleg Cambria Deeside
York College

Other venues are to be confirmed.

4. Training and Development

To help finalists prepare ahead of the UK Final, we will provide relevant technical training and share mindset development techniques, to support them to remain focused on achieving success.

Prepare students and apprentices by engaging with our benchmarking resources to master their skills and mindset masterclasses to build confidence and resilience on the WorldSkills UK Learning Lab.

5. National Finals

The National Finals are scheduled to take place in Wales during the week commencing 16 November 2026.