The 2018 Miss Alabama USA competition is the beauty pageant that selects the representative for the state of Alabama in the Miss USA pageant.
Alabama is one of the more successful and (recently) consistent states at Miss USA. Although they have had a number of runners-up, finalists, and semi-finalists, they have only had one Miss USA. Even more successfully, Sylvia Hitchcock, Miss USA 1967, went on to win the Miss Universe title. Two Miss Alabama USA titleholders have placed first runner-up to winners from California: Candace Michelle Brown was first runner-up to Shannon Marketic in 1992; Pamela Flowers was first runner-up to Summer Bartholomew in 1975.
Four Miss Alabama USA titleholders were former Miss Alabama Teen USAs. Of these three, two placed better in the Miss competition than they did as teens.
Every year, each state holds a preliminary competition to choose their delegate for the Miss USA pageant. In some states (such as Texas and Florida), local pageants are also held to determine delegates for the state competition. The state winners hold the title "Miss State USA" for the year of their reign.
The most successful state is Texas, which has had the most semi-finalists and winners, including five consecutive Miss USA titleholders during the 1980s.[22] Other successful states include California, New York, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia. The least successful states are Delaware, placing only once in 2015; Montana, which has not placed since the 1950s; South Dakota, which has only placed three times (the last time in 2016), and Wyoming, which gained only its second placement in 2010. The only state which has produced more than one Miss Universe is South Carolina.
The Miss Universe Organization licenses out the state pageants to pageant directors, who in some cases are responsible for more than one state. The most well established directorial groups are RPM Productions, created in 1980 (Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina), and Vanbros, created in the early 1990s (Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma). Future Productions direct the most states, seven, across the Midwest and Rockies.