Nobel Peace Prize Announcement On Friday: How Laureates Are Chosen — Explained

The Nobel Prize season has begun and the prestigious awards for 2025 have already been announced in Physics, Physiology or Medicine and Chemistry fields this week.

John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their groundbreaking discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in electric circuits.

In Physiology or Medicine, Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi were honoured for their pioneering work on peripheral immune tolerance, the committee announced.

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi.

With this, the awards for three other categories: literature, peace and economic sciences will be announced soon. The announcements, which began on Oct. 6, will continue till Oct. 13.

The prize for literature will be announced at the Royal Swedish Academy in Stockholm on Thursday. The Peace Prize will be revealed on Friday at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo. The Economics Prize will be announced on Monday in Stockholm.

The selection of Nobel Peace Prize laureates is a months-long process. Last September, the Norwegian Nobel Committee began accepting nominations from qualified individuals and institutions. The nomination deadline is Feb. 1.

Then, the Committee reviews submissions and creates a shortlist by March. From March to August, expert advisers evaluate the candidates. In early October, the Committee selects the laureates through a majority vote.

“At the beginning of October, the Nobel Committee chooses the Nobel Peace Prize laureates through a majority vote. The decision is final and without appeal. The names of the Nobel Peace Prize laureates are then announced,” the Nobel Prize website states.

The winners are then publicly announced. The Nobel Peace Prize is formally awarded on Dec. 10 in Oslo, where laureates receive a medal, diploma and a document confirming their prize amount.

Nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize are submitted by a select group of qualified individuals and institutions. These include members of national assemblies, governments, and international courts of law. Moreover, university chancellors and professors in fields such as social science, history, philosophy, law, and theology also submit nominations. Leaders of peace research institutes and institutes of foreign affairs are also eligible, along with previous Nobel Peace Prize laureates.

The history of the Nobel Prize dates back to the story of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor and businessman, who left a will dedicating his fortune to reward those who “conferred the greatest benefit to humankind” in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. The first prizes were awarded in 1901. In 1969, Sweden’s central bank established the Economics Prize to honour Nobel’s memory.