Ranking by Stephen Diaz [@stephen.inventor.diaz]

Graphics by Krizza Enriquez [@kxxenriquez]

The 2024 pageant season ended with a lot of clouds hanging over the Big5 Pageants. While this is not something new, it seems that finding a good country to host the major pageants is an extremely difficult endeavor. The general public seems to have lost its appetite with beauty pageants. Miss World is struggling to keep up with its calendar. The pageant claims that its 71st edition is in fact for the pageant year 2023 but it clearly it belongs 2024. Miss Universe suffered a barrage of allegations from its former staffs and its 2024 edition is far from impressive which left the fans wondering if the pageant is now in decline.

Miss International showed some promise but it needs to level up and has a lot of catching up to do to capture a bigger slice of the market. Miss Supranational seems to have stagnated. The pageant has only 68 contestants this year just three more than what it had in 2023. Miss Earth 2024 was supposed to be Vietnam but eventually returned to its home base. The overall result of the pageant was spectacular but the production needs a massive upgrade.

Despite of all the gloom and doom, there’s hope in the horizon. The Big5 Ranking welcomes United Arab Emirates, Eritrea and Maldives for the first time. Numerous conservative countries are now participating in major pageants. The latest ranking also reflects the shifting trajectories of some countries. For example, Finland, a powerhouse in the early days of beauty pageants, is now out of the Top 10 and has been replaced by Puerto Rico. There is a huge leap for South Sudan and Cabo Verde and traditional superpower countries no longer hold the same clout as before!

Indeed, we will carefully watch the 2025 pageant season as the Big5 Pageants are now clearly at the crossroads. The world is in uncertain times. War in some parts of the world is still ongoing. The effects of climate change is greater than ever before and across the world people are struggling to keep up with cost of living. Still, we hope for the best. We have no other choice but to be optimistic of the future.

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