María Corina Machado, who was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, is an opposition leader in Venezuela, where she built one of the country’s most important political movements.
She has been in hiding since the candidate she backed lost the 2024 election to President Nicolás Maduro — a vote that was widely seen as rigged.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prize, said in a statement that it chose Ms. 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.”
The committee said that it chose Ms. Machado primarily for her efforts to advance democracy “in the face of ever-expanding authoritarianism in Venezuela.”
Ms. Machado, 58, is the eldest daughter of a prominent steelmaking family, and attended an elite Catholic girls’ school in Caracas and a boarding school in Wellesley, Mass. She studied engineering and finance and later worked for the family company, Sivensa.
In 1992, she created the Atenea Foundation, which provides aid to children living in poverty in Caracas. A decade later, she became a political activist and was a founder of Súmate, a voter rights group that led a failed effort to recall Hugo Chávez, the founder of the country’s modern socialist movement and Mr. Maduro’s predecessor.
Ms. Machado joined the National Assembly in 2010, after winning a record number of votes. She leads the Vente Venezuela opposition party, and in 2023 she announced a bid to become president in the 2024 election.
Ms. Machado was blocked from running over what the government said were financial irregularities when she was a national legislator. She backed another candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia.
Mr. González ran against Mr. Maduro, who has held power since Mr. Chávez died in 2013. Mr. Maduro claimed victory in the election.
The opposition, however, claimed it had won, and collected evidence that it said showed Mr. González won by a wide margin.
Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told reporters after the announcement that the judges weighed the security implications of giving the prize to Machado. “This is the discussion we have every year for all candidates, particularly when the person who receives the prize is, in fact, in hiding because of serious threats to her life,” he said, adding that the committee believed the award would support her cause.
Mr. Frydnes said he hoped that she would be able to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony in December but that it would depend on the security situation.