How is the Nobel Peace Prize decided?
The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winners will be announced on October 10, with one winner out of 338 nominees. Let’s take a look at how the award works here. Alice Rizzo has more.
Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist, engineer, and inventor, preferred combiners over dividers, even though his own experiments were aimed at making things explode.
Nobel, who died in 1896, invented dynamite.
Still, according to his will, Nobel wanted the Peace Prize named after him to be awarded annually to a group or person who has done “the most or the best work in promoting friendship between nations.”
Does that sound like President Donald Trump openly coveting an award? This year’s winners will be announced on October 10th in Oslo, Norway.
Peace studies experts and prize historians such as Øyvind Stenersen, who wrote a book on the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 while a researcher at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo, say the Nobel Peace Prize is almost certainly not.
“Multilateral diplomacy, strengthening democracy, human rights, climate policy and a better organized world are what the Nobel Committee is calling for, based on the ideals of Alfred Nobel,” Stenersen said. “I think Trump’s candidacy is very weak.”
Nina Greger is director of the Oslo Peace Research Institute. She said Trump deserves some recognition for his efforts to make progress in stopping wars in Gaza and Ukraine. A ceasefire and hostage release agreement between Israel and Hamas was reached on October 8th, mediated by President Trump. But Greger said Trump has also taken actions that uncomfortably border on promoting peace.
“He withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord. He launched trade wars against friends and allies. He says he is trying to seize Greenland from NATO ally Denmark. He also authorized attacks on ships off the coast of Venezuela that could ultimately violate international law.”
Still, as a committee of five former Norwegian politicians hands out the award for the 106th time since 1901 (although there are some years it’s not), one person who appears to have no doubts about who deserves the award is Trump himself. And if he wins, he will join four other U.S. presidents who have received the award for various contributions to peace, both during and after their presidential terms.
“They’ll never give me the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s a shame. I deserve it, but they’ll never give it to me,” Trump said during a February White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is facing allegations from the International Criminal Court in The Hague in connection with Gaza, later nominated President Trump for the award.
The nomination was primarily for Trump’s first-term role in negotiating the 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states, rather than his continued efforts to forge peace between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Who deserves the Alfred Nobel Peace Prize?
Officially, the nomination is to be kept secret. However, nominators such as members of research academies, university professors, scientists, past Nobel laureates, and members of parliament from around the world may choose to make their proposals public.
Over the years, Trump has been nominated for the award multiple times. For promoting the reduction of North Korea’s nuclear program. For pursuing policy principles that would avoid “endless wars.” For vowing to fulfill his campaign promise to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Trump has also publicly said at least six times that he deserves the award. He and his allies have recently cited his various peace efforts related to the long-simmering conflict between Israel and Iran. Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. Cambodia and Thailand. India and Pakistan. Serbia and Kosovo. Egypt and Ethiopia. and Azerbaijan and Armenia.
But Kjetil Tronvoll, a peace and conflict researcher at Oslo’s New University College, said the lobbying campaign was likely to backfire because it fundamentally contradicted and “provoked” core assumptions within Norway about how laureates should behave.
“It doesn’t matter whether Mr. Trump stands on his head or solves all the conflicts in the world. He may deserve the award. He will never win it, because it’s not just about being a pacifist and human rights defender, it’s about being a dignified representative of the award in the eyes of the committee and the Norwegian people.”
Tronvoll said Norwegians do not view President Trump that way. Few public figures have so clearly asserted their peacebuilding abilities.
He added that many surprising, and perhaps in retrospect, undeserving nominees have won the award despite having questionable, authoritarian, or even cruel records.
Surprising Peace Prize winners include Henry Kissinger
Former President Barack Obama received this award in 2009., Less than eight months after taking office, he had achieved little in terms of concrete peace-related policy decisions. The late diplomat Henry Kissinger achieved victory at the height of the Vietnam War, although his geopolitical achievements were later marred by accusations by some historians and thinkers that he had committed war crimes and human rights abuses. Aung San Suu Kyi, a symbol of democracy in Myanmar, received the award in 1991 while under house arrest. Since then, her reputation has been tarnished by her apparent support for Myanmar’s military campaign, which has involved mass killings and violence targeting the persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority.
Less than a year after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2019, a brutal conflict erupted between Ethiopian federal forces and the rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front in Tigray, Ethiopia’s northern regional state.
Americans also appear to think Trump is not ready to become the fifth US president to win the award. Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to receive this award in 1906 for his contributions to ending the Russo-Japanese War. Woodrow Wilson received this award in 1919 for his central role in the peace negotiations that ended World War I. Jimmy Carter was awarded the award in 2002 for his work promoting human rights and promoting democracy over the decades since his presidency. Obama’s 2009 award cited his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.
A Washington Post Ipsos poll in late September found that 76% of Americans thought Trump didn’t deserve the award, compared to 22% who said he didn’t deserve it. The same poll found that 54% of Americans think Obama did not deserve to win the award in 2009.
Each year, the director of the Oslo Peace Research Institute compiles a shortlist of people deemed worthy of receiving the Peace Prize. Trump was unable to secure production cuts for 2025. This year, Greger named five organizations that he believes are deserving of this award.
◾The Committee to Protect Journalists is a U.S.-based media watchdog that collects data on journalists who have been attacked or killed and defends journalists in crisis.
Sudan’s emergency response room is providing communal kitchens, assistance with evacuations, and medical and other services in the country where nearly 13 million people have been displaced by the outbreak of armed conflict in 2023.
◾European Organization for Security and Cooperation for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. It monitors the fairness and integrity of elections in 57 countries.
◾The International Women’s Federation for Peace and Freedom, which encourages more women to participate in global peacebuilding efforts.
◾The International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, which prosecute crimes such as genocide and war crimes.
Tariffs and the Nobel Prize: Norway’s call
Trump has not completely withdrawn from the campaign. Nobel Prize experts may say he has virtually no chance of winning. But Odds Tracker, which collates data from around 24 bookmakers, places him second behind favorites Sudan Emergency Room.
“I wish him all the best,” said Oleksandra Matvichuk, who received the award in 2022 for her work leading the Center for Civil Liberties, which promotes human rights and democracy in Ukraine.
“Being president of the United States means we have to achieve a sustainable and just peace,” he added, referring to the difficulties Trump faces in getting Russian President Vladimir Putin to commit to diplomacy and ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.
According to Norwegian newspaper Dagens Näringsliv, Trump’s bid for the award may be proceeding through other channels. The newspaper reported in August that Trump called Norway’s Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg in July to discuss trade tariffs and the Peace Prize effort.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the aid effort.
However, Stoltenberg confirmed in a statement to USA TODAY that the call took place. The former NATO chief said: “I will not elaborate further on the content of the conversation.”
