Miss Grand International

The pre-pageant activities of Miss Grand International usually consist of three main events, the swimsuit competition, a national costume parade, and the preliminary contest. The swimsuit competition is organized at a separate venue to determine the winner of the Best in Swimsuit award while the national costume and the preliminary round of each edition are usually held at the same venue of the grand final round.[71][72] All aforementioned events are live streamed via the pageant's Facebook and YouTube accounts.[72] In the preliminary round, all contestants will compete in swimwear and evening gowns in front of a panel of preliminary judges.[72] Each round of the preliminary competition and the Swimsuit competition will determine the winner of Best Evening Gown and Best in Swimsuit awards which will be announced later on the final stage of the contest as well as the winner of other special awards including Best National Costume and Miss Popular vote. Moreover, the scores from all ancillary events, preliminary competition, together with a closed-door interview portion and the swimsuit competition, also determine the Top 20 finalists during the grand final telecast of the pageant.[73]

List of the main special award winners in the Miss Grand International pageant

Edition	Best in Swimsuit	Best National Costume	Best Evening Gown	Miss Popular Vote	Country's Power of The Year	Best Social Media	Ref.
2013	Latvia	China	Dominican Rep.	Myanmar	Award given since 2020.	Not Awarded	[60]
2014	Thailand	Vietnam	Indonesia	Cambodia		Japan	[62]
2015	Costa Rica	Philippines	Japan	Sri Lanka		India	[74]
2016	Bahamas	Indonesia	England	Korea		Jamaica	[9]
2017	Costa Rica	Indonesia	China	Indonesia		Paraguay	[64]
2018	Cuba	Peru	Thailand	Vietnam		Indonesia	[75]
2019	Panama	Ecuador	Peru	Vietnam		Not Awarded	[76]
2020	Brazil	3 Countries  Guatemala  Japan  Thailand	Mexico	Malaysia	Cambodia		[77]
2021	Puerto Rico	3 Countries  Angola  Malaysia  Peru	Thailand	Cambodia	Not Awarded		[78]
2022	Not Awarded	4 Countries  Peru  Thailand  United Kingdom  Vietnam	Mexico	Mauritius	Vietnam		[79]
2023	Dominican Rep.	3 Countries  Japan  Nigeria  Vietnam	Russia	Myanmar	Myanmar		[80]

The grand final of the pageant is usually broadcast worldwide on television and the social media platforms of the pageant. As the tradition of the pageant, twenty semi-finalists are chosen from the initial pool of contestants through observation during the entire pageant, a closed-door interview, swimsuit round as well as a preliminary competition, which featured contestants competing in swimsuits and evening gowns.[73][81] However, the "Country of the year" was first introduced in 2020 edition, which was selected by the audience on social networks.[8][82] The winner of this category automatically enters the twenty finalists regardless of all previous scores.[82] The Top 20 would then compete in a swimsuit competition, with 10 of them advancing to the Top 10,[81] this number eventually was reduced to 9 with the 10th semi-finalist being the Top Popularity Winner determined through mobile voting,[73][8] all 10 semi-finalists would then compete in an evening gown and give their speeches with a ‘Stop the War and Violence' theme.[83][84]

After the speech round and evening gown competitions, the judges then select the top five to compete in the question-and-answer portion,[81][83] where all entrants will be asked the same question about an ongoing global situation; such as the management of COVID-19 pandemic crisis,[85] the 2016 United States presidential election,[9][63] and the ongoing socioeconomic and political crisis in Venezuela.[86] The judges will select the winner based on their answer and all previous accumulate scores, then the host will sequentially announce the fourth, third and second runners-up.[77][87] The last 2 candidates of the top 5 finalists will stand in the center of the stage then one of them will be named Miss Grand International.[8][77][88][89][87]

The summary of the pageant selection process is shown below.

As the tradition of this pageant, the crown of the title holders, known as the Golden Crown, has been set to be changed every 3 years,[91] all versions of the Golden Crown are made of gold and brass for structural integrity, while the exterior is adorned by diamond, and emerald.[21] Its first version was designed by a Thai jewellery design company, God Diamond, headed by Chawalit Chommuang,[92] and was used for the first three editions of the pageant.[21] The crown used from 2016 – 2018 (2nd version) and 2019 – 2021 (3rd version) was designed by an unrevealed company and George Wittels, respectively.[21][66][93]

The latest version of the golden crown, which was going to be used for the 2022 – 2024 edition, was also made by a Venezuelan jewellery designer, George Wittels,[94] who signed as the official jewel sponsor of the Miss Grand International Organization during 2019 – 2024.[66][93] He additionally designed the crown for all four runners-up of the pageant since the 2019 edition, the first time that the organization provided the crown for the runner-up positions.[93]

Since 2014, the organizer has also been offering USD$ 40,000 cash to each year winner for spending a year work as the organization's spokesperson in its campaign,[32][74][77][95] the prize was increased from USD$ 30,000 in 2013;[60][95] however, some Vietnamese media published that Nguyễn Thúc Thùy Tiên earned USD$ 60,000 for winning the contest in 2021.[91] Furthermore, all four runners-up of each edition, also received cash prizes, ABS-CBN reported that Samantha Bernardo of the Philippines got USD$ 6,000 in cash after she had obtained the first runner-up title at the Miss Grand International 2020 pageant in Bangkok, Thailand,[96] Vartika Singh of India received USD$ 4,000 for her second runner-up finish at the 2015 edition,[97][98] and 3,000 and US$2,000 for the third and fourth runners-up, respectively.[98] Besides the finalists, the winner of each special award also received a prize; approximately USD$ 1,000 – 3,000 according to the 2013 to 2015 contests.[95][98][99][100]

After relinquishing the crown to the successor, the immediate predecessor is provided with a replica tiara; the replica is usually produced by the same designer as its master.

Gallery of Miss Grand International crowns

• 
  The first edition of the golden crown, as worn by Miss Grand International 2014, Lees Garcia
• 
  The second edition of the golden crown, as worn by Miss Grand International 2018, Clara Sosa
• 
  The third edition of the golden crown, as worn by Miss Grand International 2020, Abena Appiah

Edition	Country	Titleholder	National Title	Venue of Competition	Number of Entrants
2024	TBA	TBA	TBA	Yangon, Myanmar	TBA
2023	Peru	Luciana Fuster	Miss Grand Peru 2023	Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam	69
2022	Brazil	Isabella Menin	Miss Grand Brazil 2022	West Java, Indonesia	68
2021	Vietnam	Nguyễn Thúc Thùy Tiên	Miss Grand Vietnam 2021	Bangkok, Thailand	59
2020	United States	Abena Appiah	Miss Grand United States of America 2020		63
2019	Venezuela	Valentina Figuera	El Concurso by Osmel Sousa 2018	Caracas, Venezuela	60
2018	Paraguay	Clara Sosa	Miss Grand Paraguay 2018	Yangon, Myanmar	75

Country/Territory by number of wins

Miss Grand International's winning countries and territories by the number of wins Color key:   2 titles   1 dethroned title   1 title   1 temporarily assumed title

List of countries by number of Miss Grand International wins

Number of win (s)	Country/Territory	Years
2	Peru	2017, 2023
1	Brazil	2022
	Vietnam	2021
	United States	2020
	Venezuela	2019
	Paraguay	2018
	Indonesia	2016
	Australia[lower-alpha 1]	2015
	Dominican Republic[lower-alpha 2]
	Cuba	2014
	Puerto Rico	2013

Notes

At the grand final of the 2020 edition in Bangkok, Thailand, in addition to crowning the winner, the representative of Myanmar, Han Lay, also took the stage to make a declaration against alleged atrocities committed by the Myanmar military in her home country and requested international awareness of the ongoing democratic struggle following the military coup on 1 February 2021.[67][101][102][103] She additionally requested the United Nations to take action against the Myanmar regime and pleaded for urgent international aid for the ongoing bloodshed.[67][101][102][103] Following her speech, she received life-threatening criticisms on her social media accounts, but the vast majority of comments were supportive of her actions.[102] Furthermore, the Myanmar military government allegedly issued an arrest warrant against her under a law against all material intended to cause a member of the armed forces to mutiny or disregard their duty,[104][105] which caused her to apply for refugee status and a work permit in Thailand with the support of Burmese labor in Thailand.[106][104][105] The pageant organizer also supported her with the necessary expenses and hired her as company personnel until she immigrated to Canada for political asylum in late 2021.[106][104][105][107]

Since the Thai coup d'état in mid-2014, the organization's personnel have always been showing their political aspects against the country's military government, causing them to receive criticism from the ultraconservative and far-right political citizens, generally called Salim in Thai, on various social media platforms,[108][109][110] and they have also been subjected to legal action after expressing their opinions against a government measure over the police and military violent crackdown on anti-government protests and the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2021.[110][111][112] Many pageant contestants also took action against the Thailand military government for the aforementioned incidents, such as Helen Maher of Scotland and Samantha Bernardo of the Philippines.[113][114]

In the Miss Grand International 2021 competition, the pageant's preliminary events was entirely schedule for Phuket; however, some ancillary activities was cancelled due to the opposing political views between the organizer and the pro-military government local community; which caused the application for property use to be revoked.[115][116][117] The local government also declined to facilitate the event arrangement in the province.[115][116][117][118]

Another political impact also occurred in the 2021 edition when the representative of Vietnam, Nguyễn Thúc Thùy Tiên, who was later elected 2021 winner, declared a sentence in Thai during the semi-finalists' speech round that means ' Make the world a better place for everyone' while raising the three-finger salute, a protest symbol inspired by the Hunger Games and has been adopted by many pro-democracy protest movements in Southeast Asian countries, which includes Thailand.[119][120] The aforementioned action has greatly displeased supporters of the Thai military government, causing them to gather to present letters of protest to the Vietnamese embassy in Bangkok, accusing that her action is interfering in Thai internal affairs since the Constitutional Court of Thailand has determined that using the three-finger salute in Thailand is intended to overthrow the Thai regime.[121][122] However, Vietnam's foreign affairs has no official diplomatic responsiveness to such an issue, despite some Thai government's political groups claiming that Vietnam's Ministry of Culture has made a statement to take action and remind her to refrain from making public speeches on issues that may affect Thailand–Vietnam relations.[123][124]

In addition, Radio Free Asia also reported that Thuy Tien's speech with the pro-democracy three-finger salute was censored by the Vietnamese government, which does not allow the domestic press to release any media, comments, or explain its meanings. In the case of regulatory violations, all materials were removed shortly after being published. In the days after Thuy Tien's coronation, public compliments and supporting comments for her inspiring three-finger salute movement were observed on various Vietnamese press-released media, but most of those articles or paragraphs were shortly disappeared, no longer accessible, or the details was not mentioned. Moreover, in many press-released videos, the section of such action or even the entire video was removed.[125]

On October 3, 2022, the pageant organizer revealed all the roommate pairing lists of Miss Grand International 2022 candidates in a live video streamed on the pageant's official Facebook page, in which the Russian and Ukrainian candidates were paired as roommates amid the ongoing war between the two countries.[126][127][128] The issue has sparked an overwrought discussion on many social media sites because of the tense political situation between the two countries over the past few months,[129][130][131] Some accused the organizer of attempting to profit from the conflict by pairing the two contestants on purpose to make the contest viral and demanded the organizer adjust the room sharing situation, while others advised thinking optimistically and that the beauty competition had nothing to do with the war.[130]

However, even though the representative from Russia, Ekaterina Astashenkova, has stated through social media that there is no problem staying together with the Ukrainian representatives during the contest, the Ukrainian representative, Olga Vasyliv, denied doing so and also called for removing Russia from the competition,[127][132][133][134] a part of her statement is shown below.[127][132][134]

...I received a letter that instilled in me feeling of rage and pain, my assigned roommate is going to be a competitor from a terrorist country, from a country that lost all laws and order, from the depot country, from the disgusting and deceitful stain on the body of our beautiful planet, from Russia. Dear Nawat Itsaragrisil, believe me, I am also for peace, love, friendship, and support, but not for those who I can not forgive, not for those who tortured my brothers and sisters, not for those who took the lives of so many fellow Ukrainians. I am important! My feelings are important! And my Ukraine is important! Glory to Ukraine!

— Olga Vasyliv, Miss Grand Ukraine 2022

The public debate on social media and the call from the Ukrainian representative caused the organizers to change roommates for both of them after the two contestants had arrived in Bali, to prevent any further issues.[131]

Since the establishment of the contest, there was one case of resignation from her title when 2015 Miss Grand International winner Anea Garcia from Rhode Island, a Dominican American model, who later placed third in the Miss USA 2015 pageant then represented Dominican Republic in the Miss Grand International.[135] She stepped down from her reign and was replaced by first runner-up Claire Elizabeth Parker from Australia in which the contest cited "with immediate effect, Miss Anea Garcia will step down from her position as Miss Grand International 2015 due to unable to fulfill and follow the contractual agreement with Miss Grand International Organization."[136][137][138][139] The organization further stated, "her studies were in the way, making it very hard for us to schedule her activities."[135] Garcia was interviewed by The Providence Journal and stated that she resigned since "her safety was in jeopardy when she was sexually assaulted in South Sudan while representing the organization and [they] showed no concern about the incident" after she informed the organizers.[140][141] The Miss Grand International later claimed that Garcia was "dethroned" for being "demanding and disrespectful" and for taking an "inappropriate photo while wearing the crown with a revealing slit in her dress in the upper leg-crotch area," as opposed to the organization's initial press release that she "stepped down."[140]

Parker, who succeeded Anea Garcia as Miss Grand International 2015 after her resignation, was later stripped off from her title in February 2019, almost four years after her reign ended and the organization released a statement that she's no longer be addressed to as Miss Grand International 2015 when she decided to take part in a major national pageant title, Miss Universe Australia 2019 a preliminary of one of the Big Four international beauty pageants, Miss Universe.[142][139]

Several statements and actions made by the pageant's founder, Nawat Itsaragrisil, have attracted controversy to the pageant itself.

In 2016, Nawat was reported by Miss Iceland 2015 Arna Ýr Jónsdóttir to have said that "she's too fat and needed to lose weight" prior to the finals of Miss Grand International 2016 held in Las Vegas on 25 October 2016,[143] eventually dropping out of the pageant before the coronation due to the controversy. Jónsdóttir, a former member of the Icelandic national athletics team, stated "I decided to stand by myself and women in general, I'm not going to have anyone telling me that I am too fat to look good on stage."[144] In a statement, Nawat said that they give similar advice to other contestants who asked what should they do to improve to win. Nawat eventually said that he had spoken with Jónsdóttir along with the company's vice president and clarified matters.[145] The pageant organizers was also accused of withholding her passport and "threatened me by saying, you can get your passport back if you pay 3,000 dollars"[146] after she withdrew from the contest. Jónsdóttir was eventually able to retrieve her passport.

Nawat has also expressed displeasure[147] about the behavior of Filipino pageant fans online. This is after several incidents of Filipino pageant fans attacking him on social media. These incidents include accusations of Nawat rigging the results of Miss Grand International, of him having a bias against Filipina contestants,[148][149] an Instagram post where Nawat insinuated that the coronation of Catriona Gray as Miss Universe 2018 was a rigged affair[150] and saying that Miss Philippines 2018 didn't make it due to the rest of the contestants being better than her.[150]

Nawat has also gotten into a verbal row with the Miss Supranational organization after the then reigning Miss Supranational Chanique Rabe did not include Miss Grand into what she considers the "Big Five" of pageants, saying that those pageants were "minor crowns".[151]

The pageant stirred another controversy when the organizers allowed Emily Delgado, who represented the United States in the Miss Grand International 2019 to parade in a Native American-inspired costume with headdress and walked on the stage with stereotypical gestures in which she drew ire in the social media for cultural appropriation.[152] The mockery of the Native values was initially confirmed and denounced by Ashley Callingbull of Alberta’s Enoch Cree Nation, Canada's first Indigenous woman to win the Mrs. Universe title in 2015.[153]

Liberia entered the Miss Grand International pageant for the first time in 2021. The country representative was Hajamaya Mulbah, one of the Miss Grand Liberia 2021 finalists, who was promoted to replace the original winner of such a contest, Goretti Itoka.[227][228][229] The organizers cited Itoka wished to relinquish the title willingly, howbeit, Itoka later contended that she was removed without any direct clarification from the organizers.[227][228][229] The Ministry of Information, Culture affairs, and Tourism of Liberia (MICAT) was also involved to manipulate the situation and has sent a communication document to the organizer, however, no organizer's official response.[229]

The Miss Grand Liberia 2021 is the inaugural edition of Miss Grand Liberia beauty contest, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the pageant was held virtually via Zoom application featuring 9 national finalists, in which a social media marketing strategist and the former Miss Mano River Union, Goretti Itoka, was elected as the national winner.[227][230]

Botswana joined the Miss Grand International only once in 2014, with the representation of Lillian Lillie Dlamini, who won the inaugural national contest Miss Grand International Botswana 2014, outclassing 12 other finalists,[231] The event was held on 26 July at Cresta Lodge Hotel in Gaborone, under the management of Dineo Matlapeng, a South Africa-based businessperson.[154]