The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize recipient has been announced. Was it President Trump?
President Donald Trump was on the shortlist to potentially win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025. Then, it was awarded to Maria Corina Machado. This year, the award has been given to someone new.
by Summer Lane | October 9, 2026
Once again, this year’s recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize is not President Donald Trump. Instead, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has bestowed the award upon Navanethem “Navi” Pillay “for her efforts to promote peace and international law.”
Per the committee:
“Navi Pillay’s commitment to universal legal principles and her firm moral compass are constants in a long career. Born into a family of Indian Tamil origin under apartheid in Durban, South Africa, Pillay became a lawyer and legal pioneer, confronting deep structural discrimination, segregation and exclusion. A common thread runs from her early work defending Nelson Mandela and others who stood up against apartheid to her service as a judge in some of the key international court cases of our time.”
In the lead-up to the committee’s decision, President Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, “I settled eight wars. Another one is coming. I got all the hostages back. I did things that nobody else has ever done. I’m not bragging – I’m just telling you the facts.”
According to The New York Times, one of Pillay’s more notable efforts amid international law “is her pioneering work on the gravity of sexual violence during conflict.” She has served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and pushed to define wartime rape of women and children as a “weapon of war” rather than mere “collateral damage,” the outlet reported.
However, on Friday, President Donald Trump shared a post on Truth Social that appears to be written by one of the president’s former defense lawyers, David Schoen.
The statement argued, “Today the Nobel Committee shamed itself beyond repair and demeaned the once great Nobel Peace Prize by giving it to the UN’s Navi Pillay. Pillay is an unabashed hater of America and Israel. In her position she celebrated terrorists and rewarded Hamas. She conducted a phony ‘investigation’ claiming to find that Israel committed genocide and urging prosecution. She has no credibility in any normal sphere and has never done a thing to foster peace. Just the opposite…”
Last year, Pillay headed up a commission within the United Nations aimed at investigating the situation in Gaza as it pertains to the ongoing conflict between the occupied Palestinian territory and the Israelis.
“In the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli policies and actions implemented since October 2023 – including explicit and implicit support for criminal actions of violent settlers – demonstrate clear intent to forcibly transfer Palestinians, expand Israeli Jewish civilian presence and annex the majority of the West Bank,” Pillay wrote in an October 2025 statement regarding the commission’s inquiries. “The purpose is to prevent any potential Palestinian self-determination and statehood and maintain an indefinite occupation.”
On that note, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has been swift to condemn the Nobel committee’s decision. “The Nobel Prize committee has lost its moral compass,” a statement from the office declared. “It has awarded its highest honor to a bigot who built her career around inventing and propagating blood libels against the one and only Jewish state.”
Photo: Adobe Stock
