"I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!" she wrote on X.
"We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve Freedom and democracy," she added.
Machado has been in hiding in Venezuela for the past year since elections that authoritarian leftist President Nicolas Maduro is accused of stealing.
Machado, who was barred from contesting the election, campaigned instead for her stand-in, ex-diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, seen by much of the international community as the rightful winner.
The Nobel Committee cited her "tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy."
Machado, 58, has backed Trump's ongoing campaign of military pressure on Maduro, including a major US naval deployment near Venezuela, as a "necessary measure" towards a democratic transition in Venezuela.
White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, shared Machado's post dedicating her Nobel to Trump on her X account.
Several of Machado's fellow opposition leaders, including two-time former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, congratulated her on her prize.
"May this recognition be another boost to achieve PEACE and for our Venezuela to leave behind the suffering and recover the freedom and democracy for which it has fought for so many years," Capriles wrote on X.
White House says Nobel Trump omission was 'politics over peace'
Washington (AFP) Oct 10, 2025 -
The White House lashed out at the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday after it awarded the peace prize to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and overlooked US President Donald Trump.
"The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace," White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung said on X.
"President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives. He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will."
Since returning to the White House for his second term in January, Trump had repeatedly insisted that he deserved the Nobel for his role in resolving numerous conflicts -- a claim observers say is broadly exaggerated.
Trump restated his claim on the eve of the peace prize announcement, saying that his brokering of the first phase of a ceasefire in Gaza this week was the eighth war he had ended.
But he added on Thursday: "Whatever they do is fine. I know this: I didn't do it for that, I did it because I've saved a lot of lives."
Nobel Prize experts in Oslo had insisted in the run-up to Friday's announcement that Trump had no chance, noting that his "America First" policies run counter to the ideals of the Peace Prize as laid out in Alfred Nobel's 1895 will creating the award.
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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