Maria Corina Machado wins 2025 Nobel Peace Prize

• Maria Corina Machado wins 2025 Nobel for democracy in Venezuela.

• The committee said they chose her for uniting the opposition despite persecution and living in hiding.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Corina Machado for her efforts to promote democratic rights in Venezuela.  

Machado, a former National Assembly member and founder of Súmate, an organization devoted to democratic development, has spent more than 20 years advocating for free and fair elections, judicial independence, human rights, and popular representation. 

She famously described her work as “a choice of ballots over bullets.”

"Machado 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 election and representative government," Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, said when announcing the winner.

He added that "Venezuela has evolved from a relatively democratic and prosperous country to a brutal and authoritarian state."

Despite years of political persecution, including disqualification from office, travel bans, and threats of imprisonment, Machado remained in Venezuela and lived in hiding.  

The Nobel Committee highlighted Machado’s role in uniting the opposition and her leadership during the July 2024 presidential election, which the Maduro government later sought to annul.