The 2018 Miss Oklahoma USA competition is the pageant that selects the representative for the state of Oklahoma in the Miss USA pageant.
Oklahoma had never won the Miss USA title until 2015, although the state came close in 1989 and 2010, when Jill Renee Scheffert and Morgan Woolard placed first runner-up to Gretchen Polhemus and Rima Fakih, respectively. They are in the top 20 states in terms of number of semi-finalists. Olivia Jordan was crowned Miss USA 2015 on July 12, 2015 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, becoming the first contestant from Oklahoma to win the national title.
Four Miss Oklahoma USA titleholders have previously competed at Miss Teen USA, three as Miss Oklahoma Teen USA, and one as Miss Illinois Teen USA. Three have also competed at Miss America.
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.