The daughter of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her mother’s behalf on Wednesday, hours after officials said Machado would not attend the ceremony.
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, told the award ceremony in Oslo that “María Corina Machado has done everything in her power to be able to attend the ceremony here today — a journey in a situation of extreme danger.”
“Although she will not be able to reach this ceremony and today’s events, we are profoundly happy to confirm that she is safe and that she will be with us here in Oslo,” he said to applause.
Machado has been in hiding and has not been seen in public since 9 January when she was briefly detained after joining supporters in a protest in the Venezuelan capital Caracas.
The director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and Machado’s spokesperson said earlier on Wednesday that she wouldn’t be able to attend the ceremony.
The daughter of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Ana Corina Sosa, accepts the award on behalf of her mother at Oslo City Hall, 10 December, 2025 – AP Photo
María Corina Machado said in an audio recording of a phone call published on the Nobel website that many people had “risked their lives” to help her arrive in Oslo.
“I am very grateful to them, and this is a measure of what this recognition means to the Venezuelan people,” she said before indicating she was about to board a plane.
“I know that there are hundreds of Venezuelans from different parts of the world that were able to reach your city that are right now in Oslo, family, my team, so many colleagues,” Machado added.
“And since this is a prize for all Venezuelans, I believe that it will be received by them. And as soon as I arrive, I will be able to embrace all my family and my children that I’ve have not seen for two years and so many Venezuelans, Norwegians that I know that share our struggle and our fight.”
“There is a long tradition that when a Peace Prize laureate cannot be present, close family members represent them,” Nobel Institute director Kristian Berg Harpviken told public broadcaster NRK. “That happened with Narges Mohammadi and with Ales Bialiatski, both were imprisoned at the time.”
Machado’s mother, Corina Parisca, and her three children are all in Oslo for the ceremony.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado in Caracas, 28 August, 2025 – AP Photo
Not the first time
The absence of a laureate is not unprecedented. In 2010, imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was unable to attend and no one collected his prize.
In 2022, Belarus’s Ales Bialiatski was represented by his wife, Natallia Pinchuk. A year later, the teenage children of Iran’s Narges Mohammadi travelled to Oslo to accept the Nobel on her behalf.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Machado the prize in October for keeping “the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness” and for “her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela.”
Machado won the opposition’s primary election but was barred by the government from running against Maduro in the July 2024 presidential election. She has accused Maduro of stealing the election, a claim backed by much of the international community.
Argentina’s President Javier Milei arrives at Oslo City Hall before the award ceremony of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, 10 December, 2025 – AP Photo
Argentine President Javier Milei, Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino, Paraguay’s President Santiago Peña and Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa are attending the ceremony.
The four Latin American heads of state will be received by King Harald V on Wednesday after the ceremony, before holding individual meetings with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
Exiled Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, who sought asylum in Spain in September 2024, also arrived in Oslo on Tuesday.
