Nobel Peace Prize Committee Weighs Options After Trump's Campaigning
The body that awards the Nobel Peace Prize is approaching this year's selection with added caution, according to experts, after Donald Trump mounted an intense public campaign for the honour in 2025.
The US president's repeated demands to be recognised with the prize placed the five-member Norwegian committee under extraordinary strain, and the panel is aware that Trump is watching its decision closely once more.
Matters became more complicated still when last year's laureate, Venezuelan opposition figure Maria Corina Machado, handed her Nobel gold medal to Trump. She said he was deserving of it following the capture of President Nicolas Maduro.
Kristian Berg Harpviken, who serves as secretary of the Nobel committee, said lobbying of the panel is nothing new.
"There's always a lot of lobbying, and ultimately perhaps also attempts to exert pressure on the committee," he told AFP in an interview. "So in one sense we're very used to that."
Several observers suggest the controversy surrounding Trump may push the committee toward a laureate who commands wide agreement when the name is made public on October 9.
Haakon Gjerlow, acting director of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, said the panel may be looking to avoid another heated situation. "After last year's prize, maybe they're seeking a less controversial situation this year," he told AFP.
His preferred outcome would be a shared award for Save the Children and Mykola Kuleba, a Ukrainian campaigner for children's rights who works to bring back Ukrainian minors unlawfully deported to Russia from occupied areas. Such a choice could also sit well with Trump's wife Melania, who in 2025 wrote to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking for the release of Ukrainian children.
Gjerlow also listed Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms, a large volunteer network whose members risk their lives aiding people caught between war and hunger; the Committee to Protect Journalists, following the deadliest year on record for journalists in 2025; and even the International Space Station as possible picks.
Should the committee decide to confront Trump directly, other options include UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese, the International Criminal Court, or Pope Leo XIV.
Attention is also on the literature prize, which will be revealed on October 8. Debate is already lively in Swedish literary circles, though the shortlist and the jury's discussions remain classified for five decades.
Having recognised Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai last year, the Swedish Academy may this time select a woman writer, potentially from Latin America, according to critics who spoke to AFP.
Lina Kalmteg, a literary critic at Swedish public radio SR, pointed to what has been called a "Latin American literary miracle" — a newer generation that emerged after male writers associated with magical realism, such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
"In this new wave, it's women who are taking the lead, with writing often tinged with feminism, but also often quite dark and violent, punctuated by surreal touches," she said.
Kalmteg described Argentine author Samanta Schweblin, 48, as an intriguing and unexpected possibility, though she added that Schweblin is likely still too young. Literature laureates are recognised for their overall body of work rather than a single book.
Others favour Antiguan-American writer Jamaica Kincaid, whose themes include exile, identity and the traumas passed down from colonialism, or Chinese author Can Xue.
Among the names regularly floated in Nobel speculation are Australia's Gerald Murnane, his fellow Australian Alexis Wright, American writer Thomas Pynchon and Mexican author Cristina Rivera Garza.
The Academy has faced longstanding criticism for favouring male, Western writers. A MeToo scandal in 2018 left it badly damaged, and more than half its members have been replaced since then. In the years that followed, nearly every other literature laureate has been a woman.
Nobel week begins on Monday with the medicine prize, which experts say could recognise research into the GLP-1 appetite-regulating hormone behind weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic. Physics follows on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday, and the economics award closes the week on October 13.
Each Nobel Prize comprises a diploma, a gold medal and a cheque worth about $1.2 million, divided among laureates when a prize is shared.
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