What are the criteria for selecting Nobel Peace Prize winners in 2025?
Executive summary
The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize is chosen under the legal prescription of Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will — principally for whoever “has done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the formation and spreading of peace congresses” — but in modern practice that language is interpreted broadly by the Norwegian Nobel Committee within a structured nomination and deliberation process [1] [2]. Eligibility, who may nominate, the committee’s internal procedures and long-standing political realities together form the practical criteria that determine the winner each year [3] [4] [5].
1. Legal foundation: the will’s text that still governs the prize
The foundational criterion for every Peace Prize, including 2025, remains Alfred Nobel’s wording that the award should go to the person or organization who “has done the most or the best” to promote fraternity among nations, reduce standing armies, and promote peace congresses — the clause the Norwegian Nobel Committee cites as the primary legal guide for its decisions [1] [2]. That 1895 mandate is deliberately broad and ambiguous, which gives the Committee latitude to apply the ideal across eras and causes; historians and analysts note that evolving definitions of “peace work” are central to how the Committee interprets Nobel’s will [5] [6].
2. Who can be nominated and who gets to nominate
All living persons and active organizations are eligible to be nominated, but nominations are only valid if submitted by people and institutions specified in the Nobel statutes — a list that includes members of national assemblies and governments, university professors in certain disciplines, leaders of peace research institutes and international courts, past laureates and current or former members of the committee itself [3] [4] [7]. The right to nominate is therefore restricted and institutionalized, meaning thousands of potential nominators worldwide, but not the general public, shape the candidate pool [2].
3. Procedural timeline, secrecy and administrative limits
The rules set fixed administrative boundaries: valid nominations must arrive by the January 31 deadline for consideration that year, after which the Norwegian Nobel Committee reviews the submissions, consults advisers, narrows a shortlist and seeks consensus before announcing the laureate in October and presenting the prize in December [3] [4] [5]. The names of nominees and details of nominations are kept secret for 50 years under Nobel Foundation statutes, which constrains public transparency about how candidates rose or fell in the selection process [8] [4].
4. How the Committee evaluates — reports, advisers and consensus-seeking
In practice the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee commissions background reports from advisers and experts, weighs the nominations against Nobel’s criteria, and aims for a consensus decision at meetings that can extend into early October; Committee members may also add names during early meetings after nominations close [3] [5]. The Committee frames its choice in normative terms — assessing “who has done the most or the best” — which leaves room for qualitative judgments about impact, longevity, symbolism, and the contribution to peace or democracy [9] [1].
5. Political reality, controversy and interpretive discretion
Although the Committee is institutionally independent, its choices inevitably carry political weight and often provoke debate over whether selections reward aspirations versus measurable outcomes; critics argue the prize can be politicized, sometimes honoring symbolic or controversial figures and occasionally producing backlash that reflects the difficulty of translating Nobel’s 19th‑century language into modern geopolitics [5] [7]. Media coverage and think‑tank commentary regularly highlight that selection criteria are applied through an interpretive lens and that the Committee’s readings of “peace” can include democratic struggle and accountability, not only traditional mediation between states [6] [10].
6. What shaped the 2025 choice: application of criteria to a live case
For 2025 the Committee explicitly stated that the laureate fulfilled the three central criteria of Nobel’s will in the Committee’s view — presenting the winner as someone who promoted democratic rights and resisted militarization in their country — and the formal mechanics matched the usual pattern: nominations collected by January 31, advisers’ reports and Committee deliberations, then an October announcement and December ceremony [11] [3] [8]. Public reaction to the 2025 award also underscored the persistent tension between legal-textual criteria and political interpretation: the Committee defended its reading of Nobel’s will while critics framed the selection as political, illustrating that the practical “criteria” for success are both statutory and interpretive [11] [12] [5].