Venezuelan Opposition Leader Machado Wins the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize
On October 10, 2025, in Oslo, Norway, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader 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 democracy.
The committee said Machado, the leader of the democracy movement in Venezuela, is one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times. She has been a key, unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided, an opposition that found common ground in the demand for free elections and representative government. Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes called her a brave and committed champion of peace who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.
More than 20 years ago, Machado helped found Súmate, an organisation devoted to democratic development, standing up for free and fair elections in what she described as a choice of ballots over bullets. She served in political office and has spoken out for judicial independence, human rights and popular representation. Ahead of the 2024 election, she was the opposition's presidential candidate, but the regime blocked her candidacy, and she backed Edmundo González Urrutia of a different party instead. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers were trained as election observers and, despite the risk of harassment, arrest and torture, kept watch over polling stations and made sure the final tallies were documented. The opposition publicised vote counts showing it had won by a clear margin, but the regime refused to accept the election result and clung to power.
The committee said Venezuela has evolved from a relatively democratic and prosperous country into an authoritarian state suffering a humanitarian and economic crisis, and that nearly 8 million people have left the country. Over the past year, Machado has been forced to live in hiding and has remained in the country despite serious threats against her life, a choice the committee said has inspired millions of people.
The committee said Machado meets all three criteria in Alfred Nobel's will for a Peace Prize laureate: she has brought her country's opposition together, she has never wavered in resisting the militarisation of Venezuelan society, and she has been steadfast in her support for a peaceful transition to democracy. Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace, the committee said, and Machado has shown that the tools of democracy are also the tools of peace.
(Source: The Norwegian Nobel Committee)
Source: The Norwegian Nobel Committee
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：Maria Corina Machado 资料照片。Carlos Díaz，CC BY 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Maria Corina Machado in a file photo. By Carlos Díaz, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
