Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, is safe and en route to Oslo but will not make it in time for the awards ceremony scheduled for 12:00 GMT on Wednesday, the Nobel Institute has confirmed.
Machado, honoured for “her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” has spent more than a year in hiding following Venezuela’s disputed 2024 presidential election.
Her supporters and international observers have long questioned whether she would be able to defy a government-imposed travel ban to attend the ceremony in person.
Her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, will accept the award on her behalf and deliver the speech Machado had prepared.
In an audio message shared by the Nobel Institute, Machado reassured supporters, saying, “I will be in Oslo, I am on my way.”
However, Nobel Institute director Kristian Berg Harpviken announced that her arrival was expected only between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, too late for the official proceedings.
Earlier in the day, uncertainty about her whereabouts had raised alarm among her family and followers. Her children and her mother, all currently in Oslo, hope to reunite with her after more than a year apart.
Machado disappeared from public view shortly after the heavily contested July 2024 election, which sparked widespread protests and mass arrests. The crackdown saw about 2,000 people detained, including members of her opposition coalition.
Her last public appearance was on 9 January, when she addressed supporters protesting Nicolás Maduro’s swearing-in for a third presidential term—an outcome widely dismissed by both domestic and international observers as fraudulent.
Fearing arrest, Machado went into hiding yet continued to influence public discourse through interviews and social media messages urging Venezuelans to remain steadfast.
Her selection as the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate energised her movement and immediately fuelled speculation about whether she could safely travel to Norway. Her journey remains shrouded in secrecy, and it is unclear how she left her hiding place or what route she used to reach Europe.
Who Is María Corina Machado?
María Corina Machado Parisca, born on 7 October 1967, is one of Venezuela’s most prominent political figures and a leading critic of the Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro administrations.
An industrial engineer with a master’s degree in finance, she co-founded the vote-monitoring organisation Súmate before entering national politics.
Machado served in the National Assembly from 2011 to 2014 and ran in the 2012 opposition presidential primary. She later emerged as a central figure in the 2014 anti-government protests and became the National Coordinator of the liberal party Vente Venezuela.
In 2023, she won the opposition primary to become the unity candidate for the 2024 presidential election, but the government barred her from running.
After naming substitute candidates Corina Yoris and later Edmundo González, the opposition claimed González had won the election in a landslide, contradicting the official results announced without evidence by the National Electoral Council.
Fearing for her life and freedom, Machado went into hiding shortly afterward.
In 2025, she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her unwavering efforts to promote democratic rights in Venezuela and her push for a peaceful transition of power.
Her international influence has been widely recognised, including her inclusion in BBC’s 100 Women in 2018 and Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in 2025.
