All the Big 4 pageants for the year 2016 are over and it’s now time for the nations to gear up for the national pageants. The national pageants are busy announcing the auditions and the winners, while the International pageants are setting up their venue for the year 2017. Miss World 2016 finale was held on 18th December 2016 which concluded with the crowning of Stephanie Del Valle of Puerto Rico as the winner.

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During the finale of Miss World 2016, another revelation was made about the host country for the year 2017. Miss World 2017 will be hosted by Indonesia. This will be the second time that the country will be hosting the pageant. Last time, Indonesia organised the finale was in the year 2013. However, there were few controversies regarding the venue that year, and later it was decided that the finals will take place on the Hindu-majority holiday island of Bali instead of near the capital, after days of Muslim hardline protests. This year, the pageant will be held in the capital city of Jakarta.

Miss World originally started as the Festival Bikini Contest, but an embarrassed British media decided to call it with a more modest name, ‘Miss World’. The pageant was met with a lot of criticism in the beginning, so much so that the swim suit was replaced with more modest swim suits after the first contest. The first Miss World (originally Festival Bikini Contest) was Kerstin "Kiki" Håkansson from Stockholm, Sweden. She was the first and last winner to be crowned while wearing a bikini.

Pakistan will make its debut at the Miss World pageant this year. Also, there are a lot of comebacks listed for this year. Madagascar (last competed in 2001); Angola, Chinese Taipei, Dominican, Uzbekistan (last competed in 2013); Barbados, Chad, Hong Kong, Kosovo, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Martinik, São Tomé & Príncipe, Switzerland (last competed in 2014) are scheduled to make their return to the Miss World pageant this year.

The finale of the Miss World 2017 will conclude with Stephanie Del Valle crowning one of the contestants’ as her successor.

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