Nobel Peace Prize goes to Venezuela opposition leader Machado

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for fighting for democracy at a time when political freedom is increasingly at risk from the rise of authoritarian regimes.

Machado, 58, has worked to unite forces resisting the South American country’s strongman President Nicolas Maduro. Blocked from running in the 2024 presidential election, she has been forced to live in hiding over the past year due to threats against her life.

“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognize courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” the Oslo-based Norwegian Nobel Committee said in a statement Friday. As she receives the world’s most prestigious award, Machado will get a gold medal and 11 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million).

In selecting Machado, the committee is seeking to sidestep a political quagmire. U.S. President Donald Trump had lobbied hard to be awarded the prize, which chafed the Norwegians as it’s not customary to campaign this loudly for the accolade. Instead, they chose a leader who shares a common enemy with Trump: Maduro.

Trump has taken a hard line against Maduro’s strongman regime. The U.S. president has ordered multiple strikes on alleged drug trafficking vessels from Venezuela, and just this week called off U.S. diplomatic engagement, raising the specter of further and more direct military intervention.

While Machado has expressed support for Trump’s stance on economic sanctions, she hasn’t supported military intervention, Kristian Berg Harpviken, secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, told reporters.

But “Trump’s campaign to get the prize has been extraordinary,” he said.

Now it remains to be seen how this prize plays out in the geopolitics of the region — and what the fallout on Norway will be from Trump’s expected disappointment.

The prizes have also generated controversy in the past. Among global leaders, Barack Obama’s award in 2009 is one often cited as an ill-thought-out move. Coming just months into his first U.S. presidential term, it preceded a surge in American troops in Afghanistan.

In 1973, then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, a leader of the North Vietnamese forces, were selected as recipients for jointly negotiating a cease-fire and ending the U.S. role in the Vietnam War. Le Duc Tho declined the prize on the grounds that Kissinger had violated the truce.

But it doesn’t always pan out when opposition leaders receive the award either. A case in point is Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991 laureate, who led opposition to the military junta ruling the country then known as Burma. The one-time democracy icon was later criticized internationally for doing too little to prevent the military’s massacre of the Rohingya population in the country.

This year, the committee cited Machado’s efforts in unifying the forces opposing Maduro’s repression.

“She has brought her country’s opposition together. She has never wavered in resisting the militarization of Venezuelan society,” the committee said. “She has been steadfast in her support for a peaceful transition to democracy.”

Machado steers the Vente Venezuela opposition party. In her life before politics, Machado studied engineering and finance and had a short career in business before establishing a foundation that helps street children in Caracas.

Later, she co-founded Sumate, a non-profit group dedicated to electoral transparency before she joined congress in 2010 with a record number of votes. The regime took away her passport amid allegations she’d tried to foment a coup against Maduro, an accusation frequently used against his critics. She is currently barred from holding public office.

In hiding, Machado has been restructuring her movement from one focused on preserving electoral integrity to one that is able to threaten Maduro’s regime from the shadows.

“Oh my god,” Machado said when hearing of the award, according to a recording of the call posted on the Nobel website. “I have no words.”

“This is a movement, this is the achievement of a whole society,” she said. “I’m honored, humbled and very grateful on behalf of the Venezuelan people. We’re not there yet. We’re working very hard to achieve it, I’m sure that we will prevail. This is certainly the biggest recognition to our people that they deserve it.”

Machado is the 20th woman to receive the prize among 143 laureates, including numerous organizations. In 2023 the accolade was given to Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, and in 2021 Maria Ressa of the Philippines shared the prize with Russia’s Dmitry Muratov. Malala Yousafzai, the youngest laureate of all time, shared the award in 2014.

Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. The prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.

--------

—With assistance from Stephen Treloar, Thomas Hall, Federica Romaniello, Alan Crawford and Patricia Laya.