María Corina Machado

María Corina Machado Parisca (born 7 October 1967) is a Venezuelan politician, activist, and prominent leader of the opposition to the administrations of Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro, and Delcy Rodríguez. She served as a member of the National Assembly of Venezuela from 2011 to 2014, and has run as a candidate in presidential elections. She was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize; she gifted the medal to U.S. president Donald Trump after the 2026 U.S. strikes in Venezuela and capture of Maduro.

An industrial engineer with a master's degree in finance, Machado began her political career as a founder of the vote-monitoring organization Súmate. She is the National Coordinator of the political party Vente Venezuela and ran in the 2012 opposition presidential primary, which she lost to Henrique Capriles. During the 2014 Venezuelan protests, she played a leading role in organizing demonstrations against Maduro's government.

In 2023, Machado won the opposition primary to become the unity candidate for the 2024 presidential election. Machado was barred from running in the 2024 presidential election because she was disqualified from holding public office for 15 years on administrative and fiscal violations dating back to her time as a legislator. Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice upheld that disqualification. She named Corina Yoris as a replacement candidate, who was later replaced by Edmundo González. The opposition mobilized to collect partial vote tallies which portrayed González as the winner of the election, although the Maduro government claimed victory instead. Shortly after the presidential election, Machado said that she had gone into hiding, expressing fears for her life and freedom under the Maduro government.

Aside from the Nobel Peace Prize, she was named one of BBC's 100 Women in 2018, and listed among Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2025. In 2024, Machado received the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize and the Sakharov Prize (shared with González) for representing Venezuelans fighting for democracy.