There is a moment before the game begins when the energy starts to build. Jerseys come out, group chats light up, friends make plans, families gather, and everyone begins thinking about how they want to show up for the occasion. For Blushington, that moment has always felt familiar.
We know that getting ready is about more than beauty. It is about anticipation, confidence, connection and the feeling that comes with preparing for something you are genuinely excited about. This summer, as the world came together for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, we saw an opportunity to bring that feeling into the match-day experience and create something entirely new: a pre-game built around beauty.
That idea became Get Match Day Ready, our World Cup activation created in partnership with Fazit, the Official Beauty Licensee of U.S. Soccer. We are incredibly proud that the campaign has now been nominated for a 2026 Beacon Award for Best Campaign, recognizing a collaboration that brought beauty, sport, self-expression and community together in a way that felt both culturally relevant and unmistakably Blushington.
We Didn't Just Get Fans Ready for the Game. We Created a New Pre-Game.
For years, Blushington has been part of the rituals that happen before life's biggest moments. A night out, a wedding, a birthday, a concert, a celebration with friends — our guests come in for the experience of getting ready together and leave feeling confident for whatever comes next.
As the World Cup approached, we began seeing that same behavior around sports. Guests were booking blowouts and beauty appointments before matches, arriving in jerseys and turning their appointments into part of the celebration. Beauty was already becoming part of the fan experience; we simply saw an opportunity to give that behavior a name, a platform and a new ritual.
Get Match Day Ready was born from that insight.
In partnership with Fazit, we created an elevated beauty experience that allowed fans to prepare for the match with their own sense of style and team pride. Guests could add professionally applied Fazit Team Soccer Collection patches to a Blushington blowout, makeup application or styling appointment, transforming the traditional beauty appointment into something much bigger: the first stop in a fan's match-day journey.
The experience launched across Blushington's New York City, Houston and Boca Raton lounges, bringing the collaboration directly into the cities where World Cup energy was building. For Fazit, the partnership marked its first professional in-lounge application experience, while for Blushington, it represented something equally meaningful — a new way to make beauty part of the culture and community surrounding the game.
The Ritual of Getting Ready Has Always Been Personal
For Blushington Co-Founder Nicki Maron, the connection between soccer and getting ready goes back much further than this campaign.
As a former college soccer player, Nicki understood the rituals of preparing for a match long before she understood the rituals of getting ready. Growing up, she was the athlete who rarely thought about beauty, while her sister and Blushington Co-Founder, Stephi Cohen, embraced the ritual of getting ready and would often help Nicki whenever they had somewhere special to be.
Looking back, Nicki realized those moments were never really about makeup. They were about confidence, connection and celebrating the occasion together.
That realization became part of the inspiration behind Blushington. The sisters built the company on the belief that getting ready isn't simply about how you look — it is about how you feel before life's biggest moments, and about the people you share those moments with.
That philosophy made the World Cup a particularly natural fit.
The ritual of preparing for a match is already deeply personal and deeply communal. Fans choose their colors, put on their jerseys, gather with friends and family and make the day feel different from an ordinary day. Get Match Day Ready simply added another layer to that ritual: the opportunity to express your team pride through beauty and walk into the experience feeling completely yourself.
When Beauty and Sports Become Part of the Same Culture
The relationship between beauty and sports is changing. What were once viewed as separate worlds are increasingly intersecting through culture, identity and self-expression, particularly as fans look for more ways to participate in the moments they care about.
The World Cup made that intersection impossible to ignore.
Across host cities, beauty became part of the way fans prepared for matches, watch parties and celebrations. Modern Retail highlighted the growing role of beauty in the fan experience and specifically noted that Blushington clients were incorporating pre-game beauty appointments into their match-day routines.
That shift is exactly what made Get Match Day Ready feel authentic.
We weren't asking fans to change their behavior. We were recognizing a behavior that was already happening and giving it a new place within the culture of the game.
As Nicki shared during the campaign, “Years ago, beauty and sports may have seemed like two separate ecosystems, but today they're one and the same.”
For us, that is the heart of the campaign.
A Partnership Built Around Expression
Fazit was the perfect partner to bring this idea to life. Known for turning fan expression into beauty through its wearable face patches, Fazit brought a playful, immediate way for fans to show their colors, while Blushington brought the artistry, expertise and experience of getting ready together.
The collaboration gave fans the freedom to make the experience their own. A polished blowout could become a match-day look with a few strategically placed patches; a makeup appointment could become an opportunity to incorporate team colors; a styling appointment could become the beginning of an entire day of celebration.
It was beauty designed not to sit on the sidelines of the experience, but to become part of it.
More Than a Campaign — A New Way to Get Ready
What makes us most proud of Get Match Day Ready is that it represents something bigger than a World Cup activation.
At Blushington, we have always believed that some of the best memories begin before the main event — in the beauty chair, getting ready with your friends, laughing, talking about what the night will bring and taking a moment to feel your best before you walk out the door.
The World Cup gave us the opportunity to bring that philosophy into a completely new cultural space.
We created a pre-game.
And in doing so, we helped redefine what getting ready for the game could look like: not simply putting on a jersey and heading out the door, but gathering, expressing yourself, celebrating your team and creating a memory before the first whistle.
That is why this 2026 Beacon Award nomination for Best Campaign means so much to our team. It recognizes not only the creativity behind Get Match Day Ready, but the larger idea that inspired it — that beauty has a place wherever people come together to celebrate.
We are incredibly grateful to the Beacon Awards for recognizing the campaign, to Fazit for helping us bring the vision to life, and to everyone who made Get Match Day Ready part of their World Cup experience.
Because sometimes the best part of the game starts long before kickoff.
It starts when you get ready.