María Corina Machado of Venezuela Is Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised “her tireless work promoting democratic rights.” Ms. Machado, who built one of Venezuela’s most important political movements, has been in hiding since last year.

By Jonathan Wolfe

October 10, 2025 – The Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who built a powerful social movement challenging the country’s authoritarian president and has been living in hiding since last year, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised “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.”

Ms. Machado emerged from Venezuela’s political sidelines and corralled the country’s fractious opposition behind her before the 2024 election. That followed years of political apathy in Venezuela, where President Nicolás Maduro’s government crushed protests and arrested dissidents, helping to spur an enormous exodus from the country.

After being barred from running, she backed an opposition candidate against Mr. Maduro in the presidential race. Mr. Maduro won what was widely regarded as a rigged election, and Ms. Machado went into hiding.

In recent weeks, she has signaled support for President Trump’s military buildup in the Caribbean that has seen the U.S. military launch strikes on boats it says were used to smuggle drugs. Her party has said that the boats were legitimate targets, and she told Fox News last month that Mr. Maduro was “the head of a narco-terrorist structure.”

The director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute called Ms. Machado a few moments before the prize was announced to tell her she had been selected. In a video the committee shared on social media, she is heard saying: “This is an achievement of a whole society. I am just, you know, one person. I certainly do not deserve this.”

David Scheffer, an international law scholar at Arizona State University, said that in choosing Ms. Machado, the Nobel committee had “elevated a courageous hero of peacemaking — someone who works among her own people to protect them against repression and atrocity crimes in order to shape a more peaceful and democratic world.”

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María Corina Machado of Venezuela Is Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – The New York Times

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