Machado, the democracy activist who fronted the campaign to end President Nicolas Maduro's authoritarian rule in last year's elections, has become a "unifying" figure in Venezuela, the jury said.
She has refused to leave despite threats against her life.
She dedicated her award to the "suffering people of Venezuela" and, in a surprise move, to Trump, who had long coveted it, citing his "decisive support of our cause".
"More than ever we count on President Trump," she wrote on X, a month into a major US military buildup near Venezuela's shores and a campaign of deadly strikes on suspected drug boats.
Machado, 58, told Nobel Institute director Kristian Berg Harpviken, who called her with news of her prize, she was confident of a peaceful transition to democracy in Venezuela.
"I'm sure that we will prevail," she said in the call, which was filmed and posted to X.
The trained engineer, in hiding for the past year, is "one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times", said Nobel Committee chair Jorgen Watne Frydnes.
Venezuelan opposition figurehead, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who lives in exile in Spain, hailed her win as "a well-deserved recognition of the long struggle of a woman and an entire people for freedom and democracy".
Within Venezuela, however, some people were openly critical of the award.
"That woman has done nothing for peace in Venezuela," Pedro Gonzalez, a 68-year-old pensioner in Caracas grumbled.
"All she has done is call for protests, call for riots, and all that sort of thing."
Venezuela's ambassador to the United Nations joked that Machado was no more qualified to win a Peace Nobel than a Physics Nobel.
But in Argentina, home to some of the millions of Venezuelans who have fled the country's economic meltdown under Maduro, there were celebrations.
Maria Angel Navas, a 31-year-old Venezuelan lawyer and activist, called the prize an "endorsement and recognition of a struggle that has been ongoing for years."
- Rock-star politician -
Machado was the opposition's presidential candidate for Venezuela's 2024 elections, but Maduro's government blocked her candidacy.
She then backed the reluctant, little-known ex-diplomat Gonzalez Urrutia as her stand-in, accompanying him on rallies where she was welcomed like a rock star.
Maduro claimed electoral victory, but only a handful of countries recognised his win.
Caracas-born Machado entered politics in 2002 at the head of the association Sumate (Join us), pushing for a referendum to recall Maduro's mentor, the late socialist leader Hugo Chavez.
The call led to treason accusations and death threats, prompting her to send her three children to live abroad.
The committee said it was aware Machado might not be able to attend the Oslo ceremony on December 10.
The award comes a month into a US campaign of military pressure on Maduro's government, including strikes on boats in waters near Venezuela alleged to be carrying drugs.
Washington accuses Maduro of leading a drug cartel, which he denies.
Machado and Gonzalez Urrutia have backed the US pressure on his government as a "necessary measure" towards the "restoration of popular sovereignty".
- Trump's dashed hopes -
Machado was not among those mentioned as possible laureates in the run-up to Friday's announcement
Yet, hours before the prize was awarded, the odds of her getting it soared from 3.75 to nearly 73 percent on the predictive betting platform Polymarket -- triggering an investigation by the Norwegian Nobel Institute into a possible leak.
Once a relatively democratic and prosperous petro-state, Venezuela is now a "brutal authoritarian state that is now suffering a humanitarian and economic crisis", Frydnes said.
Over 7 million Venezuelans -- around one-quarter of the population -- have fled the country's economic meltdown under Maduro.
Since returning to the White House for his second term in January, Trump has repeatedly insisted that he "deserves" the Nobel for his role in resolving numerous conflicts -- a claim observers say is broadly exaggerated.
His office called the committee's decision a sign of "politics over peace".
The committee had, however, made its choice days before the announcement of the deal he brokered to end the fighting in Gaza.
Five milestones in career of Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado
Caracas (AFP) Oct 10, 2025 -
From her first, highly-publicized broadside against late Socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez to winning the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, here are five milestones in the career of Venezuelan pro-democracy activist Maria Corina Machado.
- 'Expropriation is theft' -
In January 2012, during then-president Chavez's marathon annual address to parliament, in which he justifies the expropriations of hundreds of foreign- and Venezuelan-owned businesses, a voice pipes up.
"Expropriation is theft," Machado, an engineer and little-known MP, says.
Chavez dismisses her as a political minnow and refuses to debate with her, declaring: "An eagle doesn't hunt flies."
But the challenge does not go unnoticed.
Many Venezuelans praise her courage in standing up to the all-powerful Chavez, and she becomes a political celebrity overnight.
- Cast out -
In March 2014, she is stripped of her parliamentary mandate for attending a meeting of the Organization of American States as an "alternate ambassador" for Panama.
Panama had lent her the title to allow her to address the OAS assembly, where she denounces human rights violations during street protests to demand the removal of Chavez's successor, President Nicolas Maduro.
Accused of promoting violence, Machado is barred from holding public office for 12 months. Seen as a radical, her influence wanes.
- Reviving the opposition -
She returns to the frontlines after a failed attempt to oust Maduro in 2019 in the aftermath of his first re-election, which was marred by fraud allegations.
The movement is led by parliament speaker Juan Guaido, whom the United States and dozens of other countries recognize as "interim president" but Maduro sees off the attempt to depose him, with the support of the military.
With opposition morale at rock bottom, and its leadership divided, Machado steps in.
She pushes for an opposition primary to choose Maduro's opponent in July 2024 presidential elections.
She sweeps the boards in the 2023 primary with 92 percent of the votes cast by more than two million people.
The win consolidates her as opposition leader but she is barred from contesting the election by authorities loyal to Maduro.
- The power behind the candidate -
After a failed bid to have her ineligibility overturned Machado designates elderly diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia to replace her on the presidential ballot.
Gonzalez Urrutia shuns the limelight, as Machado crisscrosses the country to campaign for him, drawing huge crowds of fervent supporters.
Hope of a change at the top fizzle when Maduro is proclaimed winner of the July 28, 2024, election but the electoral commission never gives a detailed vote breakdown, claiming it is the victim of "massive cyber attack."
The opposition accuses Maduro of fraud, publishing its own tallies from individual voting stations that show its candidate winning nearly 70 percent of the vote.
Only a handful of countries, including allies Russia and China, recognize Maduro's win.
The United States proclaims Gonzalez Urrutia the country's president-elect.
- Going underground -
The crackdown on protests that erupt over Maduro's re-election claims at least 24 lives.
Around 2,400 people are detained.
Gonzalez Urrutia goes into exile in Spain but Machado stays behind to lead the resistance.
She goes into hiding, saying she fears for her life, re-emerging briefly on the back of a truck to address an opposition rally on the eve of Maduro's inauguration for a third term.
She continues trying to rally the opposition with defiant videos posted on social media and backs a campaign of US military pressure on Venezuela.
On October 10, she becomes the first Venezuelan to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Nobel Committee chair Jorgen Watne Frydnes lauds her as "one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times."
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