Donald Trump was overlooked today by the Nobel Peace Prize judges, who chose to award the prestigious honor to a Venezuelan politician, despite Trump’s involvement in brokering peace in Gaza.

The Nobel Committee selected opposition leader María Corina Machado for this year’s award. 

She was recognized for her ‘relentless efforts in promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and her relentless fight for a fair and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,’ according to Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

The US President’s name, heavily floated in the media in recent weeks, did not make the final cut.

Leading up to the decision, Trump had been actively promoting himself as a peacemaker, emphasizing his role as a bridge builder, highlighting his 20-point Gaza peace plan, and consistently claiming to have resolved multiple conflicts.

Throughout his two terms as US President, Trump had subtly campaigned for the Nobel Prize, stating that ‘many people’ believed he deserved it.

Speculation about his potential win this year arose after he facilitated the groundbreaking peace deal between Israel and Hamas, ending the two-year conflict in Gaza.

Both parties have agreed to the initial phase of Trump’s plan to halt fighting and release hostages, a pact that could pave the way toward resolving a devastating conflict that has caused tens of thousands of deaths and triggered a humanitarian crisis.

But the president emerged unsuccessful following a series of obstacles, including that nominations for this year’s award – of which there were 338 – closed at the end of January, not long after Trump returned to the White House.

The prize honours actions carried out in 2024, which was the year in which he was elected but not yet in office. 

However, over the course of his two terms in the Oval Office Trump had been nominated for the award more than 10 times – by Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet, a Ukrainian politician, as well as legislators from the US, Sweden, and Norway.

But a nomination alone does not guarantee someone will be a candidate and the prize committee does not publish a list of candidates before the winner is announced. 

It is not clear if any of Trump’s nominations came before the January deadline.

Trump’s name swirled in the media as a potential winner after his groundbreaking brokering of the peace agreement between Hamas and Israel.   

The accord, if fully implemented, would bring the two sides closer than any previous effort to halt a war that had evolved into a regional conflict that has reshaped the Middle East. 

The deal was struck under pressure from the US president who made no secret of the fact that he believed he is worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump has previously said that it would be a ‘big insult’ were he not to receive the prize and has put pressure on the Norwegian Nobel Committee, claiming to have ‘solved’ seven wars. 

‘I’ve done six wars, I’ve ended six wars,’ he said on 18 August, during his summit with Ukrainian and European leaders. 

‘If you look at the six deals I settled this year, they were all at war. I didn’t do any ceasefires.’ 

The following day, in an interview with Fox News, he revised the number to seven wars. It’s a claim he went on to repeat last month, saying that no one had ‘ever done anything close to that’. 

Netanyahu publicly nominated Trump in July, saying he was ‘forging peace as we speak’ in ‘one country and one region after the other’.

It came after Trump took credit for stopping Iran and Israel’s ’12-day war’ the month prior.  

Prior to his victory, Trump even phoned Jens Stoltenberg, the former head of NATO and now Norway’s finance minister, to lobby for the prize, according to Norwegian media. 

His feat is the peace plan in Gaza, which will see Hamas release all 20 living hostages in the coming days in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, while the Israeli military will begin a withdrawal from the majority of Gaza. 

Netanyahu said the ‘great efforts of our great friend and ally President Trump’ had helped them reach ‘this critical turning point’. 

Israel and Hamas agreed to Trump’s peace plan late on Wednesday – a day after the second anniversary of Hamas militants’ cross-border attack that triggered Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza.

But the deal announced by Trump was short on detail and left many unresolved questions that could still lead to its collapse, as has happened with previous peace efforts.

Successful completion of the deal would mark a significant foreign policy achievement for the Republican president, who had campaigned on bringing peace to major world conflicts but has struggled to swiftly deliver, both in Gaza and on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

‘I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan,’ Trump said on Truth Social.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a written statement, referring to the hostages held by Hamas: ‘With God’s help we will bring them all home.’ He said he would convene his government on Thursday to approve the agreement.

The Nobel Peace Prize creator Alfred Nobel previously said the award should be given to the person who has done the ‘most or best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses’.

However several experts around the world did not believe that Trump had fully lived up to this criteria.

‘He has withdrawn the US from the World Health Organisation and from the Paris Accord on climate, he has initiated a trade war on old friends and allies,’ Nina Graeger, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, told Sky News.

‘That is not exactly what we think about when we think about a peaceful president or someone who really is interested in promoting peace,’ she added.

However, Graeger believes that if his peace plan for Gaza materialises and holds, Trump could be a contender next year.

During Trump’s second term, he had also proposed measures that critics argued will hamper education and scientific research – two areas that are considered pillars of the Nobel Prize.

They included slashing the budget for the National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, and plans to dismantle the Department of Education to shrink the federal government’s role in education in favour of more control by the states.

Ylva Engstrom, vice president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards three of the six Nobel prizes – for chemistry, physics and economics – said she believed Trump’s changes are reckless and could have ‘devastating effects’.

‘Academic freedom… is one of the pillars of the democratic system,’ she said prior to his defeat.

The Trump administration denied stifling a academic freedom as they argued its measures will cut waste and promote scientific innovation.

Trump critics also noted his controversial US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, through which the president has been sending troops to a string of Democratic-led cities to enforce his immigration laws.

It comes after Netanyahu posted an AI image of himself presenting Trump with a Nobel Peace Prize medallion on the Israeli prime minister’s official X account.

It shows Trump lifting his hands in the air as he sports an oversized medal and is showered in confetti in front of a cheering crowd waving Israeli flags.

The US president is stood under a banner reading ‘peace through strength’.

‘Give [Donald Trump] the Nobel Peace Prize — he deserves it,’ the post is captioned.

Previous to the announcement of this year’s winner, Russia said it would back the US president’s candidature for the prestigious prize, state news agency TASS quoted Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov as saying on Friday.

And on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv would nominate Trump in exchange for Tomahawk missiles, the American-made subsonic precision weapon that launches from ships and submarines.