Beauty

20 Camels Disqualified From Beauty Show For Having Botox Injections

BYYassine Hariss

March 2, 2026

Twenty camels were recently disqualified from this year’s Camel Beauty Show Festival in Al Musanaa, Oman, after judges detected Botox, fillers, and other cosmetic tweaks designed to boost the features that typically score highest. And what was supposed to be a routine evaluation suddenly turned into one of the event’s biggest crackdowns with inspectors flagging multiple cases of tampering that violate the competition’s rules.

According to reports, veterinary teams uncovered a mix of interventions, including hyaluronic acid injections to plump lips, Botox to tighten skin, silicone wax to artificially enlarge the hump, and hormones to boost muscle definition. According to officials, several of these substances were administered in ways meant to be undetectable during casual inspection, prompting the expanded use of medical imaging and on-site testing.

In a recently shared statement, the Camel Club and the Oman Camel Racing Federation—the two bodies overseeing the competition—promised “strict penalties on manipulators,” emphasizing their commitment to halting any form of tampering and keeping the pageant aligned with its original standards and values.

Camel owners are often fined, disqualified, or even barred from entering beauty pageants after detecting Botox or filler injections in the animal. A phenomenon that is as strange and frequent as the competitions itself, across the gulf, it remains a practice many do not shy away from as they seek, by any means necessary, to engineer features judges in the past have rewarded. In 2021, Saudi officials disqualified 40 camels at the annual King Abdulaziz Camel Festival over tampering involving Botox, filler, and other injectables.

With huge lumps of money on the line (breeders can compete for $66 million in prize money at the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, ) the incentive to bend the rules has only increased over the past few years. Organizers say the financial stakes have reached a point where some owners treat cosmetic enhancement as an investment rather than a risk, despite repeated warnings and the well-documented health hazards these procedures pose to the animals.

A headline that keeps coming around every season now serves as yet another reminder: cosmetic tampering isn’t going anywhere, but neither are the committees determined to call it out and severely punish those who continue to gamble on non-ethical shortcuts.

20 Camels Disqualified From Beauty Show For Having Botox Injections

Suggestions

Articles

Topics

20 Camels Disqualified From Beauty Show For Having Botox Injections

Related Stories

More From Beauty

Suggestions

Articles

Topics

Newsletter

The only newsletter you won't unsubscribe from

Follow Us