Nobel Peace Prize 2025: Nominations, Selection Process, and More

The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded to the selected candidate tomorrow, 10th October.

Every year, thousands of nominations are sent to the committee from government officials, university professors, members of international peace organisations, former recipients, and others. The large number of nominees provides a "great variety of candidates", the Nobel committee says. For this year's titles, 338 candidates – 244 individuals and 94 organisations – were registered.

The committee receives nominations annually from September to January. The deadline for submissions is 31st January, midnight. The committee then spends a couple of months assessing the candidates' work and shortlists 20-30 potential laureates before the Nobel Institute's permanent advisers review this list and finalise the recipients. However, information about the nominators and nominees is kept confidential (unless people report their submissions themselves). It is made public only 50 years after the announcement.

As per Alfred Nobel's will, the Swedish engineer and businessman who established the Nobel Prize, the prize should be awarded to any living person or active organisation who has done "the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”

It is no secret that US President Donald Trump has been vying for the prize his entire term. But in an interview with the BBC, Nina Graeger, the director of PRIO, said it's a long shot. From withdrawing from international institutions like the World Health Organisation and the Paris climate accords to clamping down on protests, critical journalists, and academics, his actions "point in a non-peaceful direction".

The nominations would have also been closed by the time he could settle into office. If his plans for Gaza materialise, however, he could be a contender for the 2026 Nobel Prize.

In 2024, a Japanese organisation called Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the prize "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again."

In 2023, an Iranian human rights activist named Narges Mohammadi was awarded the prize "for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all."

The world will have to wait and see who the Nobel Peace Laureate is this year.