Riona Krishnan Dighe has been crowned Miss Teen Universe Asia 2026, the first Singaporean to clinch the title.
She was competing against more than 30 other delegates at the finals held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Sunday (Oct 25).
The 18-year-old advanced through the first two cuts of the finals, from the Top 20 to the Top 14, before claiming the award.
She also won Miss Popular Choice, an award decided by online public voting, placing her as the audience favourite among her cohort.
Riona competed on a platform of children’s education and access, built through charity work she has been doing since she was 11.
For the talent segment, she performed a traditional Peranakan dance, as she wanted to introduce Singapore’s heritage to an international audience.
In an Instagram post on Tuesday, the beauty queen shared some of her personal thoughts about winning in the pageant.
“I came to Cambodia as a girl from one of Asia’s smallest nations and I leave with the honour of representing an entire continent. A continent of billions, countless cultures and extraordinary women,” she wrote.
“To think that a Singapore girl has been chosen to carry the Asian crown is something I could only have dreamed of.”
She also took the chance to thank those who have supported her through this journey, including her mother, manager, team members and fellow contestants.
Riona then attributed the win to Singapore and expressed national pride.
“I may have stood on that stage alone but I had an entire nation behind me. From one of the smallest countries in Asia to a crown representing the whole continent, we have achieved something I once thought was impossible,” she added.
“Singapore, we didn’t just make our mark. We made history. Majulah Singapura!”
Not your usual beauty queen
Beyond beauty competitions, Riona is involved in AI research.
She spent two years working on applying natural language processing to Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness (GNH) framework. She had worked with a mentor from Cornell University who helped her throughout the process.
Part of the work involved her going to Bhutan to share her research with schools there and educating children on what could be done in their country.
The idea partly came about due to her exposure to Bhutan from a young age doing charity work there, where she became familiar with the concept of GNH.
“When I was talking with an official in Bhutan, he told me that it was done using surveys. I thought that surveys take too much time; it’s not very cost-effective. So I thought, why don’t we use AI?” she explained in an interview with Wonderwall.
“You could use off-the-shelf natural language processing in order to create code which allows you to measure the GNH Index.”
Her research was subsequently published in the International Journal of High School Research and was even presented to the King of Bhutan.
In closer relation to her pageantry pursuits is her modelling career.
She has walked at New York, London, Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks, and was previously Miss Teen London 2024 and first runner-up at Miss Teen Universe UK 2025.
In July, Riona was crowned Miss Teen Universe Singapore 2026.
