ILOCOS NORTE, Philippines – The top 6 Miss Universe Philippines (MUPH) 2025 queens have had an eventful past few months.

Amid hours of training, rehearsals, fittings, shoots, and everything in between, Ahtisa Manalo, Gabriella Carballo, Katrina Llegado, Chelsea Fernandez, Winwyn Marquez, and Yllana Marie Aduana have had much to learn about themselves.

Each beauty queen had come from a different background — all of them championing different advocacies and treading varying paths outside of pageantry, but are still tied together by the sisterhood they’ve formed in the moments leading up to the coronation.

Weeks after the big night, each beauty queen reflected on the biggest takeaways throughout their MUPH run in a courtesy call hosted by Pina Beauty.

Vulnerability

For MUPH 2025 1st runner-up Winwyn Marquez, who is a proud mother to her daughter Luna, it was vulnerability that she learned to be comfortable with over time.

“It’s okay to be vulnerable. Siyempre (Of course), being a mother, we are expected to be tough, we are expected to know everything, we have to be strong… Okay lang din pala ma-overwhelm. Okay lang din na umiyak dahil tao rin naman tayo (It’s okay to get overwhelmed. It’s also okay to cry because we’re human),” she told Rappler.

I feel there’s a beauty in it also, that if we actually let go of our worries, let go of the struggles, and just really reflect on things, mas magiging okay ka (you’ll be more okay). And that happened to me thanks to Miss Universe Philippines and thanks to these girls beside me as well.”

It was the same for 2nd runner-up Yllana Marie Aduana, who admitted that she had struggled with perfectionism prior to entering the competition.

“It is okay to be authentic. It is okay to be vulnerable and to be acceptable also to a lot of criticisms but at the end of the day you know you have to be who you are and you have to be so much better than who you were yesterday,” Aduana said.

Opening up to others

Each queen had faced their own battles, and had helped each other overcome them.

Such was the case with Miss Universe Philippines 2025 Ahtisa Manalo, who would often choose to keep her guard up and had difficulty opening up to new people. Manalo, however, pushed herself to let her walls down after the pageant concluded.

“It’s such a beautiful thing to open up to these girls that they made sure that my mind, and they didn’t know that that’s what I was feeling, but because they’re beautiful, kind women, they showed me how beautiful it is to be open to people and that when you’re open you can actually connect with people more. It’s a nice feeling to be liked for who you are and not because you’re pretending to be someone else,” Manalo shared to Rappler.

Finding comfort in each other

For The Miss Philippines-Supranational 2026 Katrina Llegado, it was her bond with her pageant sisters — all 65 of them — that made the whole journey worthwhile.

“More and more each day, mas nararamdaman ko ‘yung sarili ko (I feel more myself) because of them, and I’m so happy that I’m here in this journey with my sisters,” Llegado briefly shared.

Refusing to let pressure win, and acknowledging the power words hold

Cebu’s Gabbi Carballo, meanwhile, who was named The Miss Philippines-Eco International 2026, got candid about the pressure weighing all of the candidates that competed in MUPH — regardless if it’s coming from their respective local directors or their hometowns.

“If it’s not in your control, you just have to let it be taken care of by the universe,” she said.

But competing in the 2025 MUPH shifted Carballo’s mindset in more ways that one. Perhaps her most resounding takeaway? That the words we speak bear power. For her, this doesn’t just involve the way we speak about the people we cross paths with, but the way we speak about how our days go.

“We have very long days, and I would really withhold the fact from saying I’m so tired, because I didn’t want to admit it to myself that I was so that the next day I would wake up with the same amount of energy to take on a new day. So I think that’s something that I carry with me now as a reigning queen. I still am competing next year in April, so I need to maintain my energy all the way up,” Carballo added.

Discipline

The Miss Philippines-Cosmo 2025 Chelsea Fernandez of Sultan Kudarat had drawn laughs when she was just beginning to share her answer.

“One of the things that I am really proud to say is I can wake up earlier than my alarm clock,” she admitted as she chuckled along with the rest of the queens.

But she quickly made it clear that more than being able to get up early, she had a newfound sense of discipline — something that most people don’t immediately take notice of when they think about what it takes to be a beauty queen.

“That is the thing that I really learned about in my journey: to wake up early, work hard, and to always show up,” she said, adding that professionalism was key.

Quezon Province’s Ahtisa Manalo will represent the Philippines in the global edition of Miss Universe 2025 in November 2025 in Thailand. – Rappler.com