Mutya ng Pilipinas’ 58th season closes applications September 28, with final screening two days later — while its 2025 queens keep adding international wins, from a first-ever Miss Global Universe crown to a new Miss Polo Universe delegate.
She was disqualified from one Philippine crown for being too young. Two years later, Sophia Bianca Santos brought home a bigger one from Egypt.
Stephanie Ann Elmission finished fourth runner-up and won Miss People’s Choice at Miss Fitness Supermodel World 2026 in Da Lat — the latest stop in a run that began with a hometown festival crown in Dasol, Pangasinan.
Merianne Gabrielle Dekit becomes the first Filipina to win Top Model of Universe in Istanbul, hours after a second Philippine pageant crown fell in Egypt.
Jacob Kier Gomez finished second runner-up at Mister Fitness Supermodel World 2026 in Da Lat, Vietnam — the Philippines’ fourth straight podium finish, still no win.
Red Spiegelman finished in the Top 6 at Miss International Queen 2026, as Lo Colby of the United States won the pageant’s 20th anniversary edition — the Philippines’ fourth consecutive Top 6 finish at the pageant without reaching the podium.
Two separate Philippine pageant franchises sent male delegates to the same category at Top Model of Universe 2026 — pitting them against each other. Between the two of them and a historic Filipina win, the country came home with three titles.
Jesus “Jessie” Guinto is heading into Mister Glam International this December with something he didn’t have the last time he stepped onto an international pageant stage: time.
In 2023, he processed his Schengen visa to go to Spain as a host, not a competitor. He’d already won his own title, Mister Tourism Globe Philippines, at the Mister Grand Philippines 2023 national pageant, and the Filipino organizer behind that year’s international edition — where the national winner would normally compete — asked Guinto to hold the microphone instead, at the show in Huelva and Seville. He said yes, started prepping his hosting lines, and packed for a trip where the hardest thing on his plate would be pronouncing 21 countries’ names correctly.
Something happened on stage at the Mactan Expo Center in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu, during the September 13 finale of Queen Universe Philippines — the brand-new national pageant crowning its very first class of titleholders — that could have derailed Mikay Bautista’s night before it really started. She fell. She got back up, kept working the program, and finished the night with the sash. Pageant fans online reached for the same comparison almost immediately, one the coverage itself invited: Ahtisa Manalo, the Quezon Province titleholder who tripped during the Miss Universe Philippines 2025 finale and still walked away with that year’s biggest national crown. The parallel isn’t a stretch. Both moments turned a stumble into the thing people actually remembered, instead of the disaster it could have been. Three Times a Runner-Up Bautista, competing this year for Pampanga, has spent three straight years chasing a flagship national crown without landing one. At Miss International Queen Philippines — the country’s largest annual search for its representative to the international pageant for transgender women — she placed fourth …
John Wayne Alba has his sash. Mister Pilipinas Worldwide confirmed today that Alba formally received the Philippine sash at Mister International 2026’s Opening Ceremony and Press Conference in Bangkok, the ceremonial start of a pageant window that runs September 12 through 27 across Phuket and Bangkok, with the coronation itself set for September 26. Sash ceremonies rarely make news beyond a photo and a caption. Alba’s carries more weight than most, because of what happens if he actually defends it afterward. Kirk Bondad won Mister International 2025 in Nonthaburi last September, the Philippines’ second title in the pageant’s history after a first win in 2014. No Filipino man has ever defended this specific title back-to-back — not under the Thailand-based organization Bondad and Alba both compete through, the version that’s run the pageant since a 2022 leadership split divided it from a separate, Philippine-based lineage of the same name. A win for Alba on September 26 would turn Bondad’s 2025 title from an isolated result into the start of a streak. Who’s Under the Sash …
