Update (2:30 PM IST): The winner has been announced — Navanethem ‘Navi’ Pillay, the Indian-origin South African jurist, has won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in international law. Read the full story: Navi Pillay Wins Nobel Peace Prize 2026 for Law and Justice
Oslo, Oct 9 — The Norwegian Nobel Committee will announce the winner of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize today, at 11:00 AM local time in Oslo — 2:30 PM IST — at the Norwegian Nobel Institute. It is the most closely watched announcement of this year’s Nobel season, and one of the most politically charged in the prize’s recent history.
Hanging over the announcement is the campaign of US President Donald Trump, who has lobbied openly for the prize all year and lashed out at the committee in the days before today’s decision. During an Oval Office appearance this week, Trump suggested that being passed over would be a “great discredit” to the committee, according to reports, while reviving his long-running grievance over former president Barack Obama’s 2009 award. Trump has pitched his Gaza ceasefire diplomacy and a string of other deals as his case for the honour. The leaders of Israel, Pakistan and Cambodia have all publicly claimed to have nominated him — though the Nobel institutions keep nomination records sealed for 50 years, and a public claim of having nominated someone is not confirmation that the committee is considering them.
This year’s field is reported to run to 287 nominees, and the names in the bookmakers’ conversation include Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms — volunteer networks delivering aid amid the country’s civil war — along with Doctors Without Borders, Russian opposition figure Yulia Navalnaya, Pope Leo XIV, the International Criminal Court and Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.
Experts say Trump is unlikely to prevail. Days before the announcement, experts told Reuters that the five-member committee would be mindful of choosing a laureate able to withstand pressure from the US president. “I think last year’s events around the Nobel Peace Prize … will affect some of the considerations that they make,” Haakon Gjerloew, acting director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, told Reuters. “One worry the committee might have is whether awarding it to someone could put them under pressure from Donald Trump.”
The reference is to last year’s extraordinary episode. The 2025 prize went to Venezuela’s opposition leader María 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” — an award that arrived amid Trump’s own public lobbying for the honour. In January 2026, weeks after the award, Machado handed her gold Nobel medal to Trump in a bid to win his support for Venezuela’s democratic transition. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has since clarified that the honour remains with the person to whom it was awarded, even if the physical medal changes hands.
The 2025 race was also marked by a betting-market controversy that still shadows this year’s build-up. Hours before last year’s announcement, Machado’s odds on the prediction market Polymarket spiked from under 4% to nearly 70%, with more than $1.8 million flowing in from newly created accounts — prompting Norwegian authorities to open an inquiry into whether the committee’s sealed deliberations had leaked. Analysts say the episode is one reason this year’s pre-announcement markets are being watched closely for similar late surges.
What to watch today: the committee’s citation at 2:30 PM IST, the identity of the laureate, and the reactions from Oslo to Washington. This is a developing story and will be updated once the winner is named this afternoon.
