The 2018 Miss Kentucky USA competition is the pageant that selects the representative for the state of Kentucky in the Miss USA pageant. The current director for the Miss Kentucky USA and Miss Kentucky Teen USA titles is Connie Clark Harrison. Harrison is former Miss Kentucky USA 1976 who was the only representative for Kentucky to win the Miss Congeniality award at the national level.
Three Miss Kentucky USA titleholders have also held the Miss Kentucky Teen USA title and competed at Miss Teen USA. Two Miss Kentucky USA titleholders have also competed at Miss America, with one representing Wyoming.
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.