Nobel Peace Prize 2025 Awarded To Venezuela's Maria Corina Machado

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote democracy and human rights in Venezuela and for leading a peaceful struggle in a bid

to end authoritarian rule in the country.

“As the leader of the democracy movement in Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado is one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times. She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said while speaking to reporters.

The Nobel Committee explicitly called her “a champion of peace who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five original awards established by Alfred Nobel’s will in 1895. Unlike the other prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, the Peace Prize is presented by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a five-member body elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Nobel specifically instructed that Norway, rather than Sweden, handle the peace prize, though the exact reasoning remains a subject of historical speculation.

The prize is awarded annually to individuals or organizations that have made significant contributions to promoting fraternity between nations, reducing standing armies, organizing peace congresses, and advancing efforts to create a more peaceful world. In recent decades, the scope has broadened to include work on climate change and environmental sustainability, recognizing their role in global peace. Frydnes said Machado fulfilled all three criteria required for becoming a Nobel Peace laureate.

BREAKING NEWS
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 2025 #NobelPeacePrize to Maria Corina Machado for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to… pic.twitter.com/Zgth8KNJk9

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 10, 2025

Last year, the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations. The group, composed of survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was recognized for its advocacy to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.