Venezuelan Nobel laureate Machado to miss ceremony due to threats

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, will not attend the award ceremony in Oslo following threats from her country's authoritarian leadership, the Nobel Institute said on Wednesday.

Machado is not currently in Norway and will not appear on stage during the ceremony later on Wednesday in Oslo City Hall, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Kristian Berg Harpviken told broadcaster NRK.

Machado's daughter will accept the prize on her behalf and give a speech written by her mother, Harpviken said.

A staunch opponent of Venezuela's authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro, Machado was awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize in October for her commitment to the democratic rights of the Venezuelan people.

Traditionally, the prize is presented on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards.

However, there had been uncertainty for weeks about Machado's participation due to her situation in Venezuela, where she lives in hiding.

The Venezuelan public prosecutor's office recently threatened to consider the 58-year-old a fugitive if she left the country due to various investigations against her.

She could face arrest, or an entry ban if she returned to Venezuela from Oslo.

"I have been accused of every conceivable crime, including terrorism," Machado said in an interview with NRK last week. "The regime has made itself very clear. Maduro has said that they will kill me if they catch me."

The 58-year-old dedicated the award to the "the suffering people of Venezuela" and to US President Donald Trump for his support of the Venezuelan opposition.

Following the announcement of the award, Maduro referred to her as a "demonic witch."

Machado had hoped to challenge Maduro's presidency, but was excluded from the election in 2024 due to alleged irregularities.

It is extremely rare for winners of the Nobel Prize not to accept their awards in person. Since the prize was first awarded in 1901, only five winners have been denied this honour due to imprisonment in their home countries.

Among them were German journalist Carl von Ossietzky in 1935, Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo in 2010, and Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi in 2023.

Vietnamese politician Lê Đức Thọ is the only Nobel Peace Prize winner to date who has refused the prize. He was honoured in 1973 alongside former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger for negotiating an armistice in Vietnam, but said he would not accept the award as peace had not been truly established in the country.

Machado still hopes to travel to Norway one day. "I am doing everything, we are working, doing everything for that day. When that day comes we can meet in Norway, it would be the biggest honour of my life," she told NRK last week.

This year's ceremony in Oslo is scheduled to take place at 1 pm (1200 GMT). The other Nobel Prizes - for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics will also be presented on Wednesday in Stockholm.

Each prize is endowed with 11 million Swedish kronor ($1.18 million).