Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado wins 2025 Nobel Peace Prize

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, October, 10 2025. She won “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,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in its citation. Among those who missed out was US President Donald Trump, who has made no secret of his desire to get the prestigious award. There were 338 candidates nominated for this year's peace prize, according to the Nobel Committee - though the names of the nominees will not be revealed for 50 years, as per tradition. The committee chose to focus on Venezuela at this time, in a year dominated by US President Donald Trump’s repeated public statements that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Ahead of the announcement, experts on the award had said Trump would not win it as he is dismantling the international world order the Nobel committee cherishes. CBS News - the BBC's US partner - understands Trump called Machado to congratulate her, saying she deserves the award. Reacting to the Nobel Committee announcement, Machado said: "We are on the threshold of victory and today more than ever we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our main allies to achieve Freedom and democracy. "Venezuela will be free!" Machado earlier expressed shock in response to the award, saying in a separate video message that it was the "achievement of a whole society". "I am just one person. I certainly do not deserve this," she added. Machado - who has long been one of the most respected voices in Venezuela's opposition - was barred from running in last year's presidential elections, in which Maduro won a third six-year term in office. The elections were widely dismissed on the international stage as neither free nor fair, and sparked protests across the country. Even after she was barred from the polls, she managed to unite the notoriously divided opposition faction and succeeded in getting millions of Venezuelans behind the little-known candidate which replaced her on the ballot, Edmundo González. When the government-controlled National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner - even though tallies from polling stations showed that González had won by a landslide - Machado continued to campaign from hiding as the Maduro government has repeatedly threatened her with arrest. The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or about $1.2 million, is due to be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.