Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado wins 2025 Nobel Peace Prize

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced on Friday.

"As the leader of the democracy movement in Venezuela, María Corina Machado is one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times," the committee said in a statement.

"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."

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's government routinely targeted its real or perceived opponents ahead of last year’s presidential election.

Machado was set to run against Maduro, but the government disqualified her and Edmundo González, who had never run for office before, took her place. The lead-up to the election saw widespread repression, including disqualifications, arrests and human rights violations.

The crackdown on dissent further increased after the country’s National Electoral Council, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, declared him the winner despite credible evidence to the contrary.

The election results announced by the Electoral Council sparked protests across the country, to which the government responded with force, resulting in more than 20 deaths. They also prompted the end of diplomatic relations between Venezuela and various countries, including Argentina.

In September 2024, the European Parliament voted in favour of a non-binding resolution stating that González, not Maduro, is the legitimate winner of the presidential election.

"We are in a situation of maximum persecution, and practically all the leaders that had to do with the organisation of the elections are currently either in hiding, exiled, or refugeed abroad, or detained," Machado told Euronews in an exclusive interview at the time.

"This is not an issue of the left or the right, this is an issue of freedom versus oppression, this is an issue of corruption versus justice and this is an issue of a brutal violation of human rights versus respect for them," she said.

Machado went into hiding and has not been seen in public since January. A Venezuelan court issued an arrest warrant for González, who moved to Spain and was granted asylum.

There had been persistent speculation ahead of the announcement about the possibility of the prize going to US President Donald Trump, amplified by this week’s approval of his plan for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Experts say the committee typically focuses on the durability of peace, the promotion of international fraternity and the quiet work of institutions that strengthen those goals.

Last year's award went to Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of Japanese atomic bombing survivors who have worked for decades to maintain a taboo around the use of nuclear weapons.

The peace prize is the only one of the annual Nobel prizes to be awarded in Norway.

The award ceremony will be held on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, a wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite who founded the prizes. He died in 1896.