Venezuelan opposition leader, María Corina Machado, has been announced as the winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced on Friday.
She won the prize for her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela,” said the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes.
He called her a “champion of peace” working to loosen the Venezeulan government’s “rigid hold on power.”
“Democracy depends on people … who dare to step forward in spite of grave risk,” he said.
This year, 338 candidates were in the running for the Peace Prize, including 244 individuals and 94 organisations, 52 more than last year.
The identities of Nobel nominees are kept secret for 50 years.
Last year, the Japanese peace organisation, Nihon Hidankyo, received the award for its efforts to promote a world free of nuclear weapons, drawing on testimony from survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This week has already seen laureates named in medicine, physics, chemistry and literature.
The week concludes on Monday with the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
All other Nobel Prizes are traditionally awarded in Stockholm, while the Peace Prize is uniquely presented in Oslo.
Each prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million).
The prizes are formally presented at ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and founder of the awards (1833–1896).
