The facts
The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize has not been given to anyone yet. The Norwegian Nobel Committee announces it on Oct. 9 in Oslo. The ceremony is Dec. 10. The check is 9 million Swedish kronor. What exists today is a pile of letters, and a medal from last year that already changed hands.
On April 30 the committee's secretary, Kristian Berg Harpviken, said 287 candidates are in: 208 people and 79 organizations. He would not say whether Donald Trump is one of them. Nominations stay secret for 50 years. A nomination is not an endorsement. Thousands of people are allowed to send a name, including heads of state, members of national governments and parliaments, certain professors, and former peace laureates. The deadline for this prize was Jan. 31.
The leaders of Cambodia, Israel, and Pakistan have said they nominated him. Reuters reported that if those letters were actually sent in the spring or summer of 2025, they would count, because they would have beaten the deadline. There is no public way to check. Harpviken declined to confirm it.
Other people have said so in public, which is not the same as the committee saying so. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is reported to have nominated him for brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas through Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey. Rep. Claudia Tenney is reported to have nominated him for the Abraham Accords and what she called peace through strength. Lithuanian lawmakers Ignas Vėgėlė, Rimas Jonas Jankūnas, and Petras Gražulis are reported to have nominated him together with John Coale, for mediation they say freed more than 300 political prisoners in Belarus and reopened diplomatic talk on the EU's eastern edge. In December, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana and House Speaker Mike Johnson announced a parliamentary letter drive aimed at the same deadline. Announcing a drive is not the same as a letter in the file.
He wanted this last year and did not get it. The 2025 prize went to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. On Jan. 15, 2026, at a lunch, she gave him the medal. The frame the White House showed calls it a personal symbol of gratitude for "peace through strength," on behalf of the Venezuelan people. Trump wrote that she had presented him with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work he had done. The Nobel committee said the prize cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred. The metal can move. The title cannot. He kept the medal. He is not a laureate.
This year's odds, according to people who watch the prize and do not award it, are poor. Haakon Gjerløw, acting director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, has said the chances are quite low. The reason those experts give is the war the United States and Israel opened with Iran in February. Gjerløw also said last year's aftermath, Machado handing the medal over afterward, will sit in the committee's head. The worry he described is that a winner could then get leaned on. Names floated in that conversation, not by the committee, include Pope Leo, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. Trump has already called Leo weak for criticizing the Iran war. None of that is a shortlist. The committee does not publish one.
Harpviken told AFP the committee is used to lobbying and to pressure. Gjerløw's shop thinks that after last year the committee may want a less controversial name. Friday is when that guess either dies or doesn't.
Our take
A nomination is a letter from someone who wants a favor, or a headline, or both. Cambodia, Israel, and Pakistan say they sent one. Two members of Congress say they sent one. Three Lithuanians say they sent one and brought a friend. Oslo has 287 of these letters and will not tell you if his is in the stack. The secret holds for 50 years, which is longer than he plans to wait by about 49 years and 11 months.
He already owns the souvenir. Machado won the 2025 prize for opposing a dictatorship, then handed him the medal at lunch and let the White House frame it like a diploma. He announced that she had given him her Nobel Peace Prize. The people who run the prize said no, you cannot hand the prize over, you can only hand over the hunk of metal. He kept the hunk of metal. That is the whole transaction. A grateful politician gave the man who wanted the prize a coin. The name on the prize stayed hers.
The Iran war is why the oddsmakers have him as a long shot, and it is also why the long shot is funny. You do not get to collect peace nominations in October for a war your government opened in February and expect the five people in Oslo to treat the letters as a mandate. They watched last year's winner walk the medal across the room. Gjerløw's point is that they will not be eager to mint another winner he can lean on. Pope Leo is one of the names in that gossip. Trump already called him weak. If Oslo picks the pope, that is not a mix-up. That is the joke writing itself.
Friday they announce. He can stand next to the medal he already talked a laureate out of. The prize is still the part they would not let her give away.
He has the medal. The prize still has her name on it.
