Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for her "tireless work promoting democratic rights".

The committee described the 58-year-old activist as a "woman who keeps the flame of democracy going, amidst a growing darkness" and commended her for her efforts to "achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy". In her first public remarks since the announcement, Machado, who has been in hiding since August 2024, said: "I'm in shock."

Machado was barred from running in last year's presidential elections won by President Nicolás Maduro. The polls were widely dismissed internationally as neither free nor fair.

Despite the ban, she managed to attract huge crowds in Caracas to rally for their chosen candidate – Edmundo González. Machado has refused to leave the country even though the Maduro government has threatened her with arrest. Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes said: "We base our decision only on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel."

This Nobel Prize will be hugely welcomed by Venezuela's opposition, as a way to draw further international attention to the situation in the country. But there are big questions for the opposition about where it goes next. It's something we, as international journalists, have often asked Machado in the press conferences she has sometimes given from hiding.

Much of the leadership is in exile or in hiding, because of safety fears and threats from the authorities in Venezuela. While some countries have recognised Edmundo González, the opposition candidate, as the president-elect this has not yet translated into further leverage inside Venezuela.

Repression, and crackdowns on dissent in the country, remain common. There are dozens of political prisoners. The country is suffering a deep economic crisis too.

So far, the armed forces, police, intelligence agencies and key militia groups have remained loyal to Nicolás Maduro. Calls from the opposition for the military or security forces to abandon him have so far not produced significant defections.