Reina Hispanoamericana 2026: New crown unveiled for next queen
The Reina Hispanoamericana’s iconic crown will retire this year as the pageant unveiled a new piece that will be awarded to the next queen and the succeeding titleholders.
Reigning queen Dia Mate showed off the new crown at the recent unveiling event held at Bonita Bar & Club in Bolivia and attended by the 28 delegates including the Philippines’ Francesca Beatriz Mclelland.
The crown made by Venezuelan designer and goldsmith Alejandro Arraiz “honors the past and shines into the future,” according to the Reina Hispanoamericana pageant.
It has a more modern aesthetic but has retained the cross patterns in red crystals that has made the previous crown iconic. The new piece sits perfectly on a queen’s head.
The Reina Hispanoaericana pageant said the crown is “more feminine, stronger and more powerful. This new stage honors our path and projects the future of Hispanic American women.”
The rhodium-plated piece is set with finely faceted precious crystals and required more than 800 hours to produce. “I was not designing just a jewe l— I was shaping a story,” Arraiz said.
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The new crown will land on the head of the next queen who will be proclaimed at the end of the “Gran Final,” which will be held in Santa Cruz de la Sierra on Feb. 21 (22 in Manila).
Mclelland hopes to post a second consecutive win for the Philippines and inherit the Reina Hispanoamericana title from Mate, the second Filipino woman to win the crown following Teresita Ssen “Winwyn” Marquez who won in 2017. /ra
