Miss Universe 2025: Miss Palestine Nadeen Ayoub alleges vote manipulation at Miss Universe

Miss Universe 2025 continues to find itself at the heart of controversy as Nadeen Ayoub claims fan-vote manipulation on app.

The 74th edition of Miss Universe 2025 is embroiled in an unending saga of scandals, controversies, accusations, walkouts, fallouts, public apologies, and allegations and so on. And the plot continues to thicken as Miss Palestine Nadeen Ayoub, who is the first woman from her country to compete at the international pageant held in Bangkok, Thailand, alleged that one of the fan-voting categories on the Miss Universe app showed signs of manipulation just a few minutes before the voting closed.

She took to her Instagram on November 23 to share her disappointment with her followers, calling it unjust and voicing her concern about the transparency of the process.

If you didn't know, there are categories on the Miss Universe app that are open to public voting. They are essentially popularity-based, and some of them determine who gets to enter the semifinals through fan votes. Miss Palestine was leading the Most Beautiful People voting category significantly.

What went wrong?

Nadeen said in the video, “I was leading it by far, and we only had maybe thirty minutes until the voting closes, and within two minutes another contestant went up over twenty thousand votes, which is very impossible to do unless there's more than one person voting. And it is not really realistic unless it is done internally. And I just found this is very unjust.”

She attached screenshots of the leaderboard from the app, where Nadeen was shown leading with 182,387 votes while Naise Yone from Tanzania trailed behind at 177,328, a gap of five thousand votes.

But in the final few minutes, Naise suddenly jumped to 193,338 while Nadeen's vote count moved up only to 182,415. Nadeen called such a leap impossible because only one person can cast a vote at a time, and that too to only one contestant. She speculated that something went wrong internally, alluding towards a botched or manipulated process because it didn't just make any sense.

Although she already considers herself a winner because she has the love of the people, this suggests that the title itself isn't what matters to her. The real issue, which not only she, several other people, including Miss Universe judges, pointed out, is the biased system. She took a stand to voice her disappointment towards how the voting played out.

She said, “I just want to make something very clear which is that this is not about the award I have gotten the biggest award I have gotten the biggest crown I have gotten the biggest prize by being Miss Palestine by being the voice of my people and everyone's voice that wants to speak up that wants to see justice, that wants to see the beauty and culture and all the things I represent on the international stage.”

Since it's the first time someone from Palestine has contested at the pageant, the moment carried even more emotional weight. It's a historic moment for her land and her people, so this moment not only diminished her efforts at the pageant but also attempted to take away the significance of the historic moment, but she rose above the unfair incident, calling herself a winner. “I believe I am already a winner but when something does not seem right it's a time when we have to speak up about it,” Nadeen remarked.

Previous allegations of rigging

One of the judges, Natalie Glebova, Miss Universe 2005 titleholder, announced on Instagram that, in her opinion, the first runner-up was the true winner, and she also criticised the lack of transparency in the judging process. She recalled that back in her time, there was an unbiased auditor. And until efforts are made to resolve the opaque judging process, she won't be returning as a judge to Miss Universe again.

Another judge, Omar Harfouch, a Lebanese-French composer, resigned three days before the final, claiming that a ‘secret committee’ had already selected the top 30 finalists and knew the results 24 hours before the contestants even participated.

In the caption of his Instagram post, Omar wrote that the contestants from politically sensitive countries were eliminated. “Some of the countries eliminated through this process could be at war, discriminated against, or geopolitically sensitive," he alleged. This comment puts the last-minute vote jump, which Nadeen asserted to be unrealistic, in a new light. It implies that contestants representing countries which have political tension may have been at a position of disadvantage.