This year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday morning, with a Ukrainian children’s rights activist, a Sudanese emergency response group, and the widow of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny among the bookmakers’ favorites.
An hour before the decision came, online prediction market Polymarket had the favorite as Yulia Navalnaya, who has taken up the mantle of anti-Kremlin activist following the 2024 death of her husband in an Arctic penal colony.
Other betting websites list frontrunners as the Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate, Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms, a grassroots organization that provides humanitarian help amid that country’s civil war, and Mykola Kuleba, who founded an organization to rescue Ukrainian children abducted and forcibly deported by Russia.
The International Court of Justice, Doctors Without Borders, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Pope Leo XIV are also names that have been thrown around the conversation of who might win.
Some 287 candidates have been nominated for this year’s award, according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The governments of Israel, Pakistan and Cambodia say they have nominated President Donald Trump.
Observers believe Trump’s chances have faded, with him failing to broker peace in Ukraine — something he once said he could do within 24 hours of entering office — and alongside Israel launching another war on Iran.
On Wednesday, Trump said that he still wants the award, which he has long openly coveted, but he said he didn’t think his chances were good.
“I don’t know what their decision is going to be,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “They have a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me.”
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado gave her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize medal to Trump in January as she sought U.S. support for her efforts in Venezuela
“I was very honored to receive it indirectly last time by the recipient, who said nobody in history deserves it more than President Trump,” the president said Wednesday.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
