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President Donald Trump announced a deal that aims to bring an end to the brutal war between Israel and Hamas. If it holds, brokering the agreement that leads to a lasting cease-fire and the return of all Israeli hostages could be one of the biggest accomplishments of his presidency.

On the surface, this certainly sounds like the kind of thing that could win a president the Nobel Peace Prize. And as it happens, the 2025 prize will be announced on Friday. So is this finally his time?

While a win is not totally out of the realm of possibility, the reality is more complicated. Trump has been openly and aggressively campaigning for the prize since his first term, which is unprecedented. His obvious desperation — paired with his foreign policy and authoritarian tendencies — may have actually tanked his chances with the Nobel committee. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be the first institution to bend to Trump and there are diplomatic reasons to at least consider him.

Here’s a guide, which we’ll keep updated, to Trump’s long quest to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

How do we know Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize?

He’s been insisting that he “deserves” the Peace Prize since since his first term, and he’s only grown more fixated on it. He’s mentioned the award publicly every few weeks since taking office again in January and often complains that he doesn’t think he’ll get it. Here’s typical lament, which he posted to Truth Social in June:

His obsession is so well known that he’s gotten others to campaign on his behalf, as the Washington Post reported:

Trump’s quest to match an honor handed to then-President Barack Obama has been noted by lawmakers and world leaders eager to curry favor. Several have nominated him for the prize. Others, including Trump’s deputies and even a pharmaceutical company CEO, have publicly campaigned for his victory.

Trump has also resorted to behind-the-scenes lobbying:

And Trump, eager to boost his odds, phoned an influential Norwegian friend, former NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, to float the topic as Stoltenberg, now Norway’s finance minister, walked along an Oslo street this summer, according to two officials familiar with the call.

When do they announce the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize?

The recipient will be announced on Friday, October 10, at 5 a.m. ET. The prize will be formally presented to the winner at a ceremony in Oslo, Norway, on December 10.

What is the prize for, specifically?

Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901, five years after the death of Alfred Nobel. In his will, the Swedish businessman said his sizable fortune should be used to establish prizes in the categories of physics, chemistry, medicine or physiology, literature, and peace.

Nobel’s will said the Peace Prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses,” according to the Nobel website.

Who votes on the Nobel Peace Prize?

The prize is awarded by a committee of five people, who are appointed by the Norwegian parliament. The current members of what is known as the Norwegian Nobel Committee are Jørgen Watne Frydnes (chair), Asle Toje (deputy chair), Anne Enger, Kristin Clemet, and Gry Larsen.

Was Trump nominated this year?

Yes, he has received at least four nominations this year, as the Miami Herald summarized:

Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, tapped him for the Nobel Peace Prize. “Not since Ronald Reagan has an American president better represented the national resolve of peace through strength or the fundamental case for a world without war,” the lawmaker said in a statement.

A second lawmaker, Rep. Buddy Carter, a Georgia Republican, followed suit months later. In a letter to the Nobel Committee, he singled out Trump for his involvement in brokering a cease-fire between Israel and Iran, following their war.

In June, the government of Pakistan nominated Trump for his work in brokering another cease-fire — this one between Pakistan and India. “President Trump’s leadership during the 2025 Pakistan India crisis manifestly showcases the continuation of his legacy of pragmatic diplomacy and effective peace-building,” the Pakistani government wrote in a post on X.

And, most recently, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu formally tapped Trump for the prize. He announced the nomination — which he said was for Trump’s effort to bring peace to the Middle East — during a White House visit in July, according to CNN.

This sounds like an impressive number of nominations, until you learn that Trump is just one of hundreds: “338 candidates nominated for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, of which 244 are individuals and 94 are organisations,” per the Nobel website.

Anyone can be put forward by the award by an eligible nominator, a group that includes government officials, college professors, and members of certain international organizations. (Not so fun fact: Adolf Hitler was nominated in 1939!) The Nobel Committee does not identify the nominees for 50 years, but a nominator can publicly announce their submission. So it’s possible that Trump received more nominations, but only four were publicly announced.

Has he been nominated previously?

Yes, many times. His first two publicly disclosed nominations came in 2018 for his efforts to curtain North Korea’s nuclear program. According to the Herald’s tally, Trump has received at least 12 nominations over the years, including this year’s submissions.

Could Trump win for the Israel-Hamas deal?

Theoretically, but not this year. Confusingly, the Washington Post reported that Trump’s desire for the prize may be part of the reason the White House pushed for a deal just before Friday’s Nobel announcement:

It may have helped spur Hamas and Israeli officials to strike a bargain this week, one former top Israeli negotiator said, in hopes of being able to announce a buzzer-beating peace after two years of war so that Trump can take home the gold.

The “Friday morning deadline is shaping the timeline, the announcement of the Nobel Committee in Oslo,” Col. Doron Hadar, a reservist officer who until last year commanded the Israel Defense Forces’ negotiation unit, said before Trump announced a Gaza ceasefire deal Wednesday. “Everyone understands this timeline, and that’s why I believe that by [Thursday] evening, there will already be a declaration that the sides have reached agreements.”

The Norwegian Nobel Committee actually doesn’t stay up all night on Thursday, scanning the news and chugging Red Bull as they finalizing their pick. It’s a careful, monthslong process, and the final selection is made days before the award is announced.

Following all the chatter about the Israel-Hamas deal potentially swinging things in Trump’s favor, the committee announced that this year’s winner was locked in on Monday.

“The last meeting of the Nobel Committee took place on Monday,” spokesman Erik Aasheim told AFP.

So how does the Nobel Committee select the winner?

This is not some shadowy or haphazard process: It’s all spelled out on the Nobel website, which includes a photo of the current committee in the stately room in which they deliberate:

Photo: Geir Anders Rybakken Ørslien/Nobel Prize Outreach

February 1 is the deadline for submissions. From February to March the committee reviews submissions and prepares a shortlist. This typically whittles the list to 20 to 30 candidates, who are then given closer examination:

The candidates on the short list are then considered by the Nobel Institute’s permanent advisers. In addition to the Institute’s Director and Research Director, the body of advisers generally consists of a small group of Norwegian university professors with broad expertise in subject areas with a bearing on the Peace Prize. The advisers usually have a couple of months in which to draw up their reports. Reports are also occasionally requested from other Norwegian and foreign experts.

When the advisers’ reports have been presented, the Nobel Committee embarks on a thorough-going discussion of the most likely candidates. In the process, the need often arises to obtain additional information and updates about candidates from additional experts, often foreign.

There is no decision until the final meeting before the announcement. The committee “seeks to achieve unanimity in its selection of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate,” but if they can’t reach a consensus the winner is determined by a simple majority vote.

What did Obama get the Nobel Peace Prize for?

Basically for not being George W. Bush. Obama was awarded the prize in 2009 after he’d been in power for less than eight months. The Nobel Committee praised him for his commitment to a world free from nuclear weapons and “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

This is still seen as one of the Nobel Committee’s more questionable decisions. Obama himself said he thought it should have gone to someone else in his initial statement on the honor.

“To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize, men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace,” he said.

Are there any signs that the Nobel Committee is warming to Trump?

No. The backlash to Obama’s win may have made the Norwegian Nobel Committee even more hesitant to make a controversial pick. The Committee’s former secretary Geir Lundestad later said that the decision to award Obama “didn’t achieve what [the committee] had hoped for.”

It’s widely believed that Nobel voters will be turned off by Trump’s open campaigning. And three of the five voting members have publicly criticized him for other reasons, as the Washington Post reported in August:

The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, in December decried “the erosion of freedom of expression even in democratic nations,” calling out Trump by name.

“Trump launched more than 100 verbal attacks on the media during his election campaign,” said Frydnes, 40, who has also served as the head of PEN Norway, a group that promotes freedom of expression.

… “After just over 100 days as president, [Trump] is well underway in dismantling American democracy, and he is doing everything he can to tear down the liberal and rules-based world order,” wrote Kristin Clemet, a former center-right Norwegian education minister and another of the five committee members, in May.

A third member of the committee — and thus potentially the lock on a Trump-skeptic majority — posted several messages critical of the president during his first term. In a photo on Facebook posted the day before the 2020 election, the committee member, Gry Larsen, was wearing a red “Make Human Rights Great Again” baseball hat.

Larsen, a former center-left politician, also wrote in a 2017 Twitter post that “Trump is putting millions of lives at risk,” criticizing a decision to reduce U.S. foreign aid.

The other two committee members don’t have a clear history of criticizing Trump. One of them, academic Asle Toje, wrote sympathetically about Trump’s legal travails during the Biden administration.

The two other committee members have not publicly criticized Trump, and “One of them, academic Asle Toje, wrote sympathetically about Trump’s legal travails during the Biden administration.”

Who is expected to win the prize this year?

Obama aside, the Nobel Committee tends to award people and organizations who have shown a commitment to long-lasting peace efforts, not leaders who have just scored quick diplomatic wins, historic as they may be.

Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms is the current among the bookmakers, according to Oddschecker, with Trump coming in second.

But Trump isn’t even on the annual shortlist compiled by the Peace Research Institute Oslo, which often successfully predicts the winner. The Washington Post reported:

This year, Trump isn’t on the list — although a number of organizations with which he has clashed are.

The International Criminal Court, the Hague-based body that Trump placed sanctions on in February because of its pursuit of Israeli leaders over their conduct in Gaza, is on the shortlist. So is the Committee to Protect Journalists, a watchdog for global press freedom that has raised concerns about Trump’s threats to reporters inside the United States.

Betting markets favor Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms, a community initiative that delivers humanitarian aid in the middle of that country’s civil war, another entry on [the] list.

Nina Græger, the director of PRIO, said that if Trump’s deal actually brings peace to Gaza, he would certainly have a shot at the 2026 prize.

“If this all goes the way in which we all hope it will go, the committee would consider him for the Peace Prize, I’m quite sure. They would also, however, look at whatever else he’s doing in the world, but at least they would have to consider him,” she said.

Should he win?

Maybe! And not just for the reasons he and his cronies have claimed. Jonathan Chait noted in The Atlantic that Trump’s desperation actually appears to be inspiring him to make better foreign-policy decisions:

To be sure, Trump’s desperate thirst to win this prize is of a piece with his general insatiable need to be flattered and praised—a desire that spurs plenty of bad choices, such as pushing to have anybody who opposes him thrown into prison. But in this case, it can be credited with inspiring his most constructive, prosocial impulses as president.

On the other hand, Chait argues, Trump will have little motivation to “be good” once he wins the award:

The challenge the prize committee faces is that if dangling the award in front of Trump encourages him to work hard to end conflicts, and perhaps to not start new ones, then they have to wonder what will happen if he gets it. Once given, these awards can’t be revoked. A Trump who has secured his Nobel Peace Prize might feel tempted to go after the ego gratifications that come with military conquest.

So we’re in a ridiculous situation in which presenting to give the president the Nobel Peace Prize, even if he doesn’t actually deserve it, might be the surest path to actually achieving a more peaceful world.

Will Trump Win a Nobel Peace Prize? All About His Desperate Bid.

Will Trump Win a Nobel Peace Prize? All About His Desperate Bid.