Updated Oct. 9, 2026, 9:37 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump was bracing for defeat. Still, he made a last-minute push, arguing in the Oval Office this week that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for intervening to settle or prevent conflicts around the world.
It didn’t work.
On Oct. 9 the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the prize to South African lawyer Navi Pillay for her efforts to promote peace and international law. Pillay has dedicated her career to promoting human rights law by defending the anti-apartheid movement and investigating crimes against humanity.
The decision denies Trump an award he has long coveted and frequently griped about not receiving, months after he ousted Venezuela’s leader in a military operation and launched a war against Iran.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to recognize Pillay, an international jurist, serves as a rebuke of the Trump administration’s efforts to sanction the International Criminal Court after it issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged crimes committed by Israel in its war against Hamas.
“The system of international law is under tremendous pressure and its institutions are under attack,” said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the committee’s chair. “We see a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice.”
Trump had acknowledged prior to the announcement that the award would most likely not be given to him.
“I don’t know what their decision’s going to be. They have a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me. But whether I get it or not, I have done far more, and I think it would be a great discredit to them,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Oct. 7.
Trump has said that he deserves the prize for resolving eight conflicts, including the Israel-Hamas war that has been in a nominal ceasefire since October 2025. GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida is among the Trump allies who have said they nominated Trump for the peace prize for brokering a ceasefire in the conflict and bringing hostages home.
The president’s count also includes a conflict between Iran and Israel over Tehran’s nuclear program that ended and later restarted when the United States and Israel teamed up in February to bomb Iran. The president said this week that his military intervention to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon was among the reasons he should win this year’s prize.
He also touted his tariffs on nations around the world and U.S.-led negotiations to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“I’m not bragging. I’m just telling you the facts. No president probably has settled any wars. I settled eight wars, and big ones,” Trump said on Oct. 7.
Though Trump has been praised for helping to end hostilities in certain conflicts, his peace-making efforts have not been universally successful.
Trump’s Board of Peace initiative recently touted a $2.45 billion recovery plan for Gaza but the effort has struggled to advance with Israel refusing to withdraw its troops from Gaza until Hamas completely disarms.
The ‘peace president’
The self-appointed “peace president” has seemingly found it easier in the last year to make wars than stop them.
Trump authorized a military operation in Venezuela in January to capture Nicolás Maduro, the country’s leader, and bring him to the United States to face drug charges. The Justice Department brought additional charges of conspiring to torture against Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on Oct. 8.
In February, Trump went to war with Iran. That conflict has lasted more than eight months as U.S. and Iranian negotiators struggle to broker a peace deal.
Meanwhile, Russia’s war against Ukraine has raged on with no peace in sight. (During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed he would end the fighting within 24 hours of taking office.)
Four U.S. presidents have received the Nobel Peace Prize: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, who won the award his first year in office.
Obama’s award in particular has chaffed Trump, who has argued that Obama “got a prize for doing nothing.”
For now, Trump will have to settle for other peace prizes.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino named Trump the inaugural recipient of the FIFA Peace Prize in December 2025 after the Nobel Committee passed on Trump that year.
A month later, 2025 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado presented her prize to Trump after the U.S. military operation to remove Maduro.
The Norwegian Nobel Institute has said that the prize is non-transferable. “The facts are clear and well established,” the institute previously wrote in a statement. “Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others.”
Pillay was attending a conference of human rights lawyers in Nuremberg, Germany when the Nobel Committee announced that she was the recipient of this year’s prize. Pillay appeared to be stunned and overwhelmed as she received a long ovation from her colleagues that was punctuated with shouts of “Bravo!”
“If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump,” she said when the applause finally died down, eliciting laughs from the gathered crowd.
“At this venue, your applause means a great deal to me,” Pillay added, addressing her colleagues at the conference. “You don’t want to receive an award, prize or anything unless the public agrees that you deserve this.”
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