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.
Update, September 20: Kristzan was crowned Top Model of Universe – Asia 2026 in Istanbul — his first international title, after two straight runner-up finishes. The profile below was written ahead of the competition; the full result is here. At 32, Kristzan Delos Santos had already decided that pageantry was behind him. It had given him what it was going to give him: two international runner-up finishes, one in 2022, one in 2023, both close enough to sting and neither one his. Then he went back to work. His life moved on. The pageants, he assumed, were someone else’s story now. Then, in 2025, he happened to watch a male national pageant. That same day — not a week later, not after he’d slept on it — a screening poster for Misters of Filipinas, the annual national competition that sends Filipino male titleholders to a slate of international pageants, showed up on his feed. “Something about the timing felt like a sign,” Kristzan tells ELYSPLANET. “It sparked something in me again and made me think, …
Two of the four titleholders crowned at last October’s Misters of Filipinas now have their results — plus what happened to the two men from that same night who already won, and the two whose titles didn’t survive the year.
