US President Donald Trump has made no bones about his desire to win the coveted Nobel Peace Prize.
Trump, returning to the White House after an extraordinary political resurrection, has wasted no time marketing himself as a man of peace. Not for the first time, he insists his greatest legacy will not be in steel tariffs, conservative judges, or Truth Social, but in “wars we never got into.”
Trump’s bid for the Nobel Peace Prize rests on his assertion that he brokered a ceasefire between a number of countries including India and Pakistan, a claim that New Delhi has firmly disputed.
Asked at the White House about his chances of winning the coveted prize, Trump on Wednesday said, "I have no idea... [Secretary of State] Marco [Rubio] would tell you we settled seven wars. We're close to settling an eighth. I think we'll end up settling the Russia situation...I don't think anybody in history has settled that many."
Trump said perhaps the Nobel Committee will find a way to not give him the prize.
Trump has long wanted the Nobel Peace Prize, often questioning why his predecessor, Barack Obama, was given the award in his first year in office.
“They gave Obama the Nobel Prize,” Trump told the Vegas attendees on October 25, 2024. “He didn’t even know why the hell he got it, right? He still doesn’t. He got elected and they announced he’s getting the Nobel Prize. I got elected in a much bigger, better, crazier election, but they gave him the Nobel Prize.”
Last week, Trump said if he faced a Nobel snub, it would be a "big insult" to the US. "Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They'll give it to some guy who didn't do a damn thing. They'll give it to a guy that wrote a book about the 'Mind of Donald Trump'... It will be a big insult to our country... I don't want it. I want the country to get it," the US President said at a high-profile military gathering in Quantico, Virginia, called by US defence secretary Pete Hegseth.
The Nobel Committee does not confirm the names of nominees, neither to the media nor to the candidates themselves but for the first time in the award's 125-year history the BBC, along with Norway's national broadcaster, gained exclusive access to the room.
The winner for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is to be announced on Friday, just as speculation grows if President Trump’s name will be on the list after his repeated claims he ended “seven unendable” wars this year.
The committee’s secretary, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, told the BBC he was unfazed by Trump’s push and that award campaigns aren’t out of the ordinary.
Trump’s critics say the hostilities that he takes credit for resolving were smaller in scale, his role was limited, or involved conflicts that ended long ago.
"The Trump administration has withdrawn from international institutions like the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accords, and if you look at Trump's wish to take over Greenland from Denmark… this does not speak in favour of international cooperation," Nina Graeger, director of PRIO, a peace thinktank, told the BBC.
Combined with clampdowns on protests, critical journalists and academics, she concluded: "I think these point in a non-peaceful direction."
According to the BBC report, an obstacle for Trump is that nominations for the prize – there were 338 this year – closed at the end of January, to give the committee time to assess them. Trump only returned to office that month.
Trump’s own record might even work against him, experts were quoted by the AP as saying, citing his apparent disdain for multilateral institutions and his disregard for global climate change concerns.
So, could Trump win the Nobel Peace Prize? If his name appeared on the list of 338 nominees for the prize that the Norwegian Nobel Committee put together, then he could. But if his name doesn’t appear on this year’s list, he could be nominated for next year’s prize, which would be the award’s 125th anniversary.
Self-nominations are not accepted. So someone else would need to recommend Trump to the committee.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Trump in July that he had nominated the US President for the prestigious award. But his July recommendation is ineligible for the 2025 prize, AP reported.
Families of Israeli hostages also nominated Trump, but their bid is ineligible. Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has also nominated Trump.
The Nobel Prizes are not awarded by one institution, it is given by different institutions. These include the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (for physics, chemistry and economics), the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet (for medicine), the Swedish Academy (for literature) and the Norwegian Nobel Committee (for peace).
The process starts in September with invitations to nominate, followed by a January deadline, and culminates in October when the academies and committees announce the laureates.
The chairperson of the Norwegian Nobel Committee gives the Nobel Peace Prize at the ceremony held at the Oslo City Hall in Norway.
Trump’s chances may be better next year if the Gaza truce holds. "I think it would be difficult not to look in his direction then," Graeger told the BBC.
PRIO Director Nina Græger, speaking at a Norwegian foreign press briefing, nominates aid organizations operating in warzones as prime candidates for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, emphasising their role in averting humanitarian crises amid ongoing global conflicts.
“Aid organizations working in warzones to preventing humanitarian crises certainly have Nobel Peace Prize winning potential,” PRIO Director Nina Græger tells the Norwegian foreign press association briefing on Monday morning.