The Miss Universe beauty pageant's never had it so weird.

On Sunday night at the crowning ceremony, host Steve Harvey declared that Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez was Miss Universe, which made Miss Philippines Pia Wurtzbach the first runner up.

After Gutirrez had been crowned and was blowing kisses to the crowd, Harvey returned to amend his mistake. "I have to apologise," he said as Miss Colombia nervously tittered. "The first runner-up is Miss Colombia," he announced, as a stunned Wurtzbach looked on, and finished by declaring "Miss Universe 2015 is Philippines."

Advertisement

The crowd cheered, Miss Philippines looked a bit thunderstruck and weirded out, and Miss Colombia put a smile on her face as she was uncrowned so that the crown could be placed on the rightful winner.

Later, Harvey apologised again. "I will take responsibility for this, it was my mistake," he said, holding up the results card to the camera.

The Internet was not kind to Harvey for this gaffe. And to make matters worse, Harvey tweeted an apology in which he spelt both Colombia and Philippines wrong. He had to delete its moments later.

Awkward for everyone involved. US Presidential candidate Donald Trump was the co-owner of the pageant along with NBC Universal until July this year, when that relationship came to an end with Trump's disparaging comments against Hispanics, "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists..." he had said.