The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize 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.'

Machado, an engineer by training, founded the Atenea Foundation for street children in 1992 and co-founded Sumate to promote free elections. She was elected to the National Assembly in 2010 but expelled by the regime in 2014. At the time of the announcement, she was in hiding inside Venezuela.