The Norwegian Nobel Committee has now spoken on María Corina Machado's homecoming. In a statement issued on Tuesday, two days after the Venezuelan opposition leader ended ten months abroad, the committee — the body that awarded her the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle for a democratic transition in her country — said it welcomed her return to Venezuela and set out what it hopes her presence will now achieve. "The committee expresses its hope that her return will strengthen the democratic opposition and its peaceful struggle for democracy," the award body said.
The committee did not stop at a welcome. "Much has changed in recent months, but the task remains urgent: Venezuela still requires a democratic transition founded on fundamental rights, political participation and free elections," it said. That is a direct statement of what Oslo says is still missing: the interim government under Delcy Rodríguez has set no election date, and the rights and open participation the committee named remain promises rather than practice.
The return the committee was answering happened on Sunday, when Machado appeared at the Santa Rosa sanctuary in Barquisimeto, the shrine of the Divina Pastora, and was greeted by tens of thousands of supporters. She announced herself in four words on X — "Estoy aquí. Con ustedes" ("I am here. With you") — dressed in white, embracing supporters who crowded around her. It was her first time back on Venezuelan soil since she left the country secretly last December.
The road back was long. Machado spent some eleven months in hiding inside Venezuela after the disputed 2024 election, then slipped out of the country in December 2025 and travelled to Oslo, where her daughter received the Peace Prize on her behalf. Her team says she tried at least seven times between June and September to come home — by air, by boat, from Panama, Curaçao and Virginia — and was blocked each time, a string of failed attempts that strained her ties with the Trump administration, whose officials had asked her to delay. On Sunday, President Trump said he hoped she was safe and called her "a very nice woman," and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said her safe return came out of U.S.-supported reconciliation talks.
Her closest ally abroad answered her arrival within minutes. Edmundo González Urrutia, the opposition's 2024 presidential candidate, who lives in exile in Spain, announced that "our leader, my dear María Corina, is on Venezuelan soil," called it a very important day for Venezuelans, and said he would join her very soon so the country can truly advance toward freedom.
Tuesday's statement also returns the committee to a subject it has had to address before: the medal. A few weeks after U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro in January and Delcy Rodríguez replaced him, Machado gave her Nobel Peace Prize medal to President Trump, in recognition of what she called his commitment to the freedom of the Venezuelan people. Trump thanked her for the accolade while repeating that he himself deserved the award. The committee said at the time that the prize remains inseparably linked to the person who won it, even though the medal itself can be given away — and Tuesday's words were spoken about the laureate, and about the work it honoured, on the committee's own terms.
For ordinary Venezuelans, what Oslo is pointing at is the difference between a homecoming and a vote. A peaceful, dated and verifiable election is what would let the millions who fled the country's crisis — the committee counted nearly eight million who had left when it awarded her the prize — weigh a future at home, and it is the outcome Washington says its own Venezuela policy is meant to make possible: stability decided by ballots, not by force. As of the committee's statement, no public response from the interim government in Caracas or from Washington to Oslo's words had been reported, and Machado herself had not publicly answered it. The committee issued the statement in its own name; no individual member was quoted by name.
— Previously posted on Sunday, October 25, 2026 —
She is home. María Corina Machado returned to Venezuela on Sunday after nearly 10 months in exile, announcing herself with a short post on X — "Estoy aquí. Con ustedes" ("I am here. With you") — and then appearing in public at the Santa Rosa sanctuary, the shrine of the Divina Pastora in Barquisimeto, dressed in white, smiling and embracing supporters who crowded around her with rosaries, crucifixes and phones. Reports described her giving thanks for her safe return at the shrine that Venezuelans have prayed at for generations.
The road back was not short. Machado left Venezuela secretly on the night of December 8–9, 2025 — in disguise, by some accounts without a passport, by others by sea toward Curaçao — after some 11 months in hiding inside the country and a brief detention amid the crackdown that followed the disputed 2024 election. She travelled to Oslo, where her daughter received the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf, and spent the months abroad, including time in Panama. Her team says she tried at least seven times between June and September to come back — by air, by boat, from Panama, Curaçao and Virginia — and was blocked each time by flight restrictions, missing landing permissions and cancellations they blame on the authorities. Officials denied ever blocking her; Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez had publicly dared her: "Que se venga" — let her come.
Washington noticed at once. President Trump said he had not known about the return, called Machado "a very nice woman," noted that she had given him her Nobel Prize, said he hoped she was safe, and added that "we're doing really well in Venezuela." Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the conditions that made her safe return possible came out of U.S.-supported reconciliation talks — talks that also freed hundreds of political prisoners and allowed other opposition figures to return — and that the United States expects freedoms for all political sectors to be respected.
Her team is clear about what the return is for. A spokesperson framed it as "a major step toward a democratic transition and free, fair, and verifiable presidential elections in the near future," thanking President Trump, Secretary Rubio, the U.S. government and Congress. Machado and her allies are demanding a firm electoral calendar, a new independent electoral council and a new supreme court — she has called the election date "the date of liberation" — and say a transparent election could be organised in roughly nine to ten months once the process starts. Edmundo González Urrutia says he will join her "very soon." The interim government under Delcy Rodríguez, for its part, has set no election date.
That is the contest now open inside Venezuela: the opposition's most popular figure is physically back, on the ground, calling for a dated, verifiable vote — and the authorities who dared her to come must now decide how to answer. What news it will be, the day a free and fair election is held in Venezuela.
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