Jaipur, Rajasthan: Kerala's 19-year-old Kaziah Liz Mejo was crowned the prestigious Miss Universe India 2026 at the grand finale held at Zee Studios in Jaipur on Sunday.
Mejo beat 52 finalists from across the country to win the title. During the grand finale, Miss Universe India 2025 Manika Vishwakarma crowned her successor.
Kaziah will now represent India at the 75th Miss Universe pageant, which will be held in Puerto Rico in November.
She said, "I feel so on top of the world. This is such an iconic moment and the moment that I've worked for for over three years now. And I'm so incredibly happy that I get to bring home this crown to my Kerala, to be able to show my hometown to the world, to be able to carry it to the Universe."
Talking about the difficulties she faced, "I believe that the most difficult struggle that you face will always be within, and that is to believe that you are worth more than what you think. So, being able to be on a stage as big as Miss Universe India at just 19 years old, I think that took a lot of audacity within, it took a lot of courage. And I was able to overcome that and now I stand here with the crown."
Talking about her future plans, she said, “My first plan is to bring home the crown of Miss Universe to India, and that will always be my biggest plan in life. And in everything I do, I want to be able to represent India, I want to be able to represent Kerala, and I want to be able to represent what it means to be India."
The judging panel included India’s first Miss Universe Sushmita Sen; former Miss Universe India Urvashi Rautela; Miss Universe India 2024 Rhea Singha; and environmentalist and film producer Pragya Kapoor. Former Miss India Universe and Miss Universe runner-up Celina Jaitly was also part of it.
The first runner-up and Miss International India 2026 was Vaishnavi Gannesh, while Anushri Satavlekar was named the second runner-up. Tejaswini Shrivastava secured the position of third runner-up, and Anubha Vashist Chaudhary was declared the fourth runner-up.
