The International SPA Association (ISPA) has released its full 2026 US Spa Industry Study, and the headline figure is a US$1 billion increase in annual industry revenue compared with the prior measurement.

For a sector that took a severe revenue hit during the pandemic closures of 2020, the new total marks another year of recovery-driven growth. ISPA's annual study, conducted with research partner PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), is the benchmark dataset for the US spa market — covering total revenue, spa visits, number of locations, employment and revenue per treatment — and the complete dataset will now circulate widely among operators, suppliers and investors who track the sector's health.

A US$1 billion year-on-year gain matters beyond the top line. Rising revenue in the ISPA data historically tracks three operational levers: higher average treatment prices, more visits per location, and growth in retail and ancillary spend per guest. Each of those levers has direct implications for the supply side of the industry — from skincare and body-care product volumes moving through spa retail shelves to equipment replacement cycles and staff hiring plans.

For ingredient suppliers and contract formulators, spa industry growth is a demand signal worth watching. Spas are a significant retail and professional-use channel for treatment-grade skincare, massage and body products, and professional treatments increasingly anchor brand claims that later migrate into at-home product lines. An industry adding a billion dollars in annual revenue is an industry buying more professional-size SKUs, more treatment consumables and more retail inventory per location.

The release of the full study follows ISPA's customary pattern: headline figures are previewed at the ISPA Conference, with the complete report — including detailed breakdowns by spa type (day spa, resort/hotel spa, medical spa, destination spa, club spa and mineral springs) — published afterward for members and media. The segment-level data is where operators benchmark themselves and where analysts look for the sharpest shifts, particularly the continued expansion of the medical spa category, which has outpaced the broader market in recent editions of the study.

The timing of the release also lands ahead of ISPA's 2026 engagement calendar, when the association's research and education teams typically present the findings to regional and international audiences. Spa operators use the study to calibrate pricing against national averages for treatments and to set staffing levels against industry benchmarks for revenue per treatment hour.

What comes next is the granular reading. Watch for the segment-level breakdowns — particularly medical spa location counts and average revenue per visit — and for ISPA's follow-on commentary on employment figures, since labor availability has been a persistent constraint on how much of the growing demand spas can actually serve.