María Corina Machado, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, will not attend the Norwegian Nobel Institute’s award ceremony in Oslo on Wednesday, according to NRK, Norway’s national broadcaster.
Kristian Berg Harpviken, the head of the Nobel Institute, told the NRK that Ms. Machado was not in the Norwegian capital on Wednesday morning and would not be onstage at Oslo City Hall at 1 p.m., when the ceremony is set to begin.
It was unclear where Ms. Machado was on Wednesday morning. Norwegian officials had been expecting her arrival as recently as a few days ago. On Saturday, Mr. Harpvikensaid Ms. Machado had confirmed she would be in Oslo for the ceremony.
Ms. Machado’s daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, will accept the award on her behalf, according to NRK.
Ms. Machado, the de facto opposition leader in Venezuela, has been in hiding since last year’s election, after Nicolás Maduro’s government threatened to arrest her on multiple occasions. She appeared in public for the first time at a protest in January after months of hiding.
The trip to Oslo would have held significant risks for Ms. Machado and the movement she leads, which has long tried to remove Mr. Maduro from power. “She simply lives with a death threat from the regime. It extends beyond Venezuela’s borders, from the regime and the regime’s friends around the world,” Mr. Harpviken said to NRK.
For over two decades, Ms. Machado has been one of the most prominent voices of Venezuela’s democratic opposition movement.
She became a political activist in the early 2000s and founded Súmate, a voter rights group that led a failed effort to recall Hugo Chávez, the former president and founder of Venezuela’s modern socialist movement. She later became a central figure resisting the increasingly authoritarian rule of his successor, Mr. Maduro.
In 2010, Ms. Machado was elected to the National Assembly. Although she had significant public support, she was unable to dislodge Venezuela’s leftist leadership through elections. In 2014, she was stripped of her seat.
In 2023, Ms. Machado won an opposition primary but was blocked from running for president by Venezuelan authorities in 2024.
The Norwegian Nobel Institute awarded Ms. Machado the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize in October for her contributions to advance democracy in Venezuela.
After Ms. Machado went into hiding, her daughter accepted several awards on her behalf, including the Sakharov Prize for the Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament and the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize from the Council of Europe.
The Norwegian Nobel Institute did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jin Yu Young is a reporter and researcher for The Times, based in Seoul, covering South Korea and international breaking news.
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