Nobel Laureate Maria Corina Machado Skips Oslo Ceremony Amid Threats And Criminal Charges

Venezuelan opposition figure Maria Corina Machado winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her years-long push to restore democracy in her country will not be present at today’s award ceremony in Oslo, organizers announced just hours before the event.

Her daughter, Ana Corina Machado, will receive the prize and deliver a speech written by the 58-year-old politician, who has been in hiding since August 2024 during an escalating confrontation with President Nicolás Maduro’s government.

Machado has surfaced in public only once in nearly a year, appearing briefly at a January 9 protest in Caracas against Maduro’s inauguration for a third term. Her absence from the Nobel ceremony follows warnings from Venezuela’s attorney general that she would be treated as a “fugitive” if she attempted to leave the country, citing ongoing investigations into alleged conspiracy, incitement and terrorism.

Kristian Berg Harpviken, director of the Nobel Institute, confirmed Machado’s non-attendance, stressing that her safety remains precarious. He noted that the opposition leader “lives under a death threat from the regime,” and that only a handful of people know her whereabouts. He added that the Peace Prize has, on several past occasions, been collected by family members when laureates were barred from travel.

Machado’s family including her mother and three daughters are in Oslo for the ceremony, joined by Latin American leaders such as Argentina’s President Javier Milei in a show of solidarity.

Machado was announced as the 2025 Peace Prize winner on October 10 for her non-violent resistance to Maduro’s rule since 2013. While widely praised for championing democratic freedoms, she has also drawn criticism for her close alignment with former U.S. President Donald Trump, to whom she dedicated her Nobel Prize.

The ceremony unfolds against the backdrop of heightened U.S. military activity in the Caribbean, a development Maduro claims is part of a plot to overthrow his government and seize Venezuela’s oil, an intervention Machado has publicly endorsed.