In a sudden shift for Belize’s national pageant landscape, the coveted Miss Universe Belize franchise has changed ownership for the second time in less than three years, with the rights awarded to an El Salvador-based organization earlier this year. The transfer of ownership was formally announced in a press release from the former holding body, the Miss Universe Belize Foundation, on June 19, 2026.
Under the leadership of former national director and ex-pageant titleholder Destinee Arnold, Belize reestablished a strong, consistent presence on the Miss Universe global stage, sending two consecutive contestants to the international competition after years of inconsistent participation. Arnold, who built the program from the ground up as a passion project, shared her deep disappointment over the unexpected transfer in an exclusive interview with News Five’s Britney Gordon.
Arnold explained that her team had voluntarily informed the global Miss Universe organization that they planned to step back temporarily after the 2025 competition, with the explicit intention of regaining the franchise in 2027. They requested only that the Miss Universe organization notify them if any third party submitted a bid for the franchise during their planned hiatus. That notification never came, she says, and the global organization instead awarded the full franchise rights to the El Salvador-based group without any advance warning.
“It was a heartbroken feeling. Everyone who has worked with me through the foundation knows this was never just a job—it was a passion project,” Arnold shared in the phone interview. “I took this on purely to build national pride for Belize, to showcase our local creatives and small businesses on the world’s most watched pageant stage. To have it taken away, even temporarily, is incredibly disheartening. But I haven’t given up hope. I’m still ready to fight, and my goal is to win back the franchise when it is next available in 2027. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
To win back the franchise rights, Arnold says she will need broad backing from across Belize: from local artists, business owners, and past sponsors who supported her work over the last three years. She argues that a locally run franchise is irreplaceable, because only Belizean organizers understand the nation’s culture and what the country wants to project to a global audience. “When it’s home, it comes with more passion, more drive, and more love for what we’re doing,” she said.
While Arnold acknowledges that it is not uncommon for international pageant organizations to hold multiple franchise rights across different countries, she stresses that the work her team did has left a lasting impact on Belize’s entire pageant community. Her team developed a new national pageant infrastructure that has already been adopted by other local pageant systems, including the popular Queen of the Bay program. She also pioneered an annual advocacy month centered on community service for local titleholders—a model that has already been copied by other international pageants hosted in Belize this year.
“That’s the great part of what we built: community service is now the center of what all of our local queens do, and that change isn’t going anywhere,” Arnold noted.
The new owners from El Salvador are scheduled to arrive in Belize later this week to begin preparations for upcoming national pageant competitions. The full interview was broadcast as part of News Five’s evening television newscast on Thursday.