STOCKHOLM – Donald Trump's intense campaigning last year for the Nobel Peace Prize has left the awarding committee treading carefully for this year's pick, experts said ahead of next week's prize announcement.
The US president's outspoken calls to be given the accolade put the five-member committee under unprecedented pressure last year.
The situation grew even more delicate when the laureate, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, later gave Trump her Nobel gold medal, judging he deserved it after the capture of President Nicolas Maduro.
The Nobel jury knows it is being closely watched by the US president again this year.
"There's always a lot of lobbying, and ultimately perhaps also attempts to exert pressure on the committee," the secretary of the Nobel committee, Kristian Berg Harpviken, told AFP in an interview.
"So in one sense we're very used to that."
CHILDREN, JOURNALIST, JUSTICE
According to several experts, the Trump saga could lead the committee to choose a laureate who enjoys broad consensus when the name is revealed on October 9.
"After last year's prize, maybe they're seeking a less controversial situation this year," the acting director of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, Haakon Gjerlow, told AFP.
His favourite pick would be a joint prize to Save the Children and Mykola Kuleba, a Ukrainian children's rights activist campaigning for the return of Ukrainian children illegally taken to Russia from occupied territories.
This option would have the added benefit of pleasing Trump's wife Melania, who wrote a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2025 pleading for the release of Ukrainian children.
Among Gjerlow's other favourites were Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms (ERR), a vast network of volunteers risking their lives to help people facing the double threat of war and hunger; the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) after the deadliest year on record for the profession in 2025; and even the International Space Station.
If the committee was prepared to go head-to-head with Trump, other choices could be the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese, the International Criminal Court or Pope Leo XIV.
ARGENTINE FOR LITERATURE?
The other closely-watched Nobel is that for literature, to be announced on October 8.
Speculation in Sweden's literary circles is already in full swing, fuelled by the fact that the list of nominees and the jury's deliberations are kept secret for 50 years.
After honouring Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai last year, the Swedish Academy that selects the literature laureate could this time go for a woman writer, possibly from Latin America, according to some literary critics surveyed by AFP.
"In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about the 'Latin American literary miracle', this new generation that came after the male authors devoted to magical realism, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez," said Lina Kalmteg, literary critic at Swedish public radio SR.
"In this new wave, it's women who are taking the lead, with writing often tinged with feminism, but also often quite dark and violent, punctuated by surreal touches," she noted.
Argentine author Samanta Schweblin, 48, would be an interesting and surprising choice in this category, she said.
"But she is surely still too young," she added.
Literature laureates are honoured for their body of work, not a single publication.
Others are putting their money on Antiguan-American author Jamaica Kincaid, whose work deals with exile, identity and the traumas inherited from colonialism, or on Chinese writer Can Xue.
Some "usual suspects" mentioned regularly in Nobel buzz include Australia's Gerald Murnane, his compatriot Alexis Wright, American author Thomas Pynchon and Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza.
The Academy has long been criticised for its focus on male, Western authors. It was rocked by a MeToo scandal in 2018 that left it in tatters, and more than half of its members have since been replaced.
Since then, nearly every other laureate has been a woman.
The Nobel season opens Monday with the medicine prize, which experts say could go to research into the GLP-1 appetite-regulating hormone behind weight-loss drugs like Ozempic.
The physics prize will be announced on Tuesday and chemistry on Wednesday, with the economics prize wrapping up the awards week on October 13.
The Nobel Prize consists of a diploma, a gold medal and a cheque for around $1.2 million, to be shared if there is more than one laureate in each discipline.
Never miss a major story. Get breaking news and the latest developments from South Africa and beyond as they happen.
Take a look at the topic timeline for all related articles.
30 September 2026 03:45
In Nepal's flood zone, teachers mourn students who never returned
29 September 2026 03:34
AI bosses head to White House as safety pressure builds
29 September 2026 03:30
Top gold producer Burkina Faso opens first refinery
Source: EWN (South Africa)
