Claim:
The Nobel Committee “quietly removed” Donald Trump’s name from the Nobel Peace Prize nominee list in 2025.
Rating:
In August 2025, a rumor spread that the Norwegian Nobel Committee had “quietly removed” U.S. President Donald Trump from the list of Nobel Peace Prize nominees.
For example, one image often shared in social media posts, styled to look like a breaking-news alert, read, “BREAKING: Nobel Committee quietly removes Trump’s name from Peace Prize nominee list. Citing violations of international norms and ongoing criminal proceedings, the Committee stripped the nomination.” It also featured the Nobel Prize organization’s web address, nobelprize.org, to make it appear authentic.
(Reddit u/of_course_you_are)
The claim spread widely across X, TikTok, Threads, Bluesky, Reddit, Facebook and Instagram.
In short, the claim is false. The Norwegian Nobel Committee does not publish or confirm the names of Peace Prize nominees, and no public list exists from which anyone could be removed. Nominations are kept strictly confidential for 50 years under Nobel rules, meaning the public has no way of knowing in real time who has been nominated. While individual nominators, such as politicians, sometimes announce the names they have submitted, those statements come from the nominators themselves, not the committee. Additionally, the committee has no process for “stripping” or “removing” a nominee, as social media posts claimed.
The Nobel Committee doesn’t confirm or ‘remove’ nominees
“Contrary to common belief, there is no public list of the current year’s nominees,” the FAQ on the Nobel Prize website explains. According to the organization, nominations are strictly confidential. Neither the names of nominators nor of nominees are released until 50 years after a given year’s prize has been awarded. As the site states:
The Nobel Committee does not itself announce the names of nominees, neither to the media nor to the candidates themselves. In certain cases names of candidates appear in the media. These advanced surmises are either the product of sheer speculation or information released by the person or persons behind the nomination.
The organization also stresses that a nomination is not an endorsement by the Nobel Prize. Because a wide range of people are eligible to submit names, anyone can be put forward. Only those ultimately chosen as laureates are recognized as having received the Nobel Prize’s endorsement:
Any person or organization can be nominated by anyone eligible to nominate. There is no vetting of nominations prior to the nomination deadline, hence the Norwegian Nobel Committee has no influence on the quality of the submissions. The task of the Committee is strictly limited to selecting the best candidate (or candidates) among the entire list of submissions. To simply be nominated is therefore not an official endorsement or honour extended by the Nobel Committee, and may not be used to imply affiliation with the Nobel Peace Prize or its related institutions.
All in all, these rules mean that the claim about Trump being “removed” from the Nobel Peace Prize nominee list is impossible. There is no public list to begin with, and the committee does not confirm or publish nominations. The only information that becomes public in real time comes from nominators themselves, not from the Nobel Committee.
Possible source of the rumor
There is, however, a kernel of fact that may have helped inspire the rumor. In November 2024, Oleksandr Merezhko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and head of Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, announced he had nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. In late June 2025, Merezhko told Newsweek and other outlets that he had withdrawn his own nomination after negotiations to stop the war between Russia and Ukraine stalled. He said he had “lost any sort of faith and belief” in Trump’s ability to secure a ceasefire between Moscow and Kyiv.
That decision, however, was an individual act by a single nominator, not the Nobel Committee. The committee itself never confirms nominations or issues public statements about candidates.
We contacted the Nobel Institute to ask whether nominators are in fact able to withdraw their submissions and we will update this article if we receive a response.
Trump and the Nobel Peace Prize
Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on several occasions by political supporters in the United States and abroad.
Under the Nobel Committee’s rules, qualified nominators include, among others, members of national assemblies and governments, current heads of state, university professors in certain fields, and past Nobel laureates. Because of these broad criteria, nominations often come from political allies and are sometimes announced publicly by the nominators themselves. The deadline for nominations is Jan. 31 each year.
In 2025, several such announcements were made. On June 20, the government of Pakistan stated in a post on X that it had nominated Trump. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet also publicly endorsed Trump for the award. In the United States, Republican members of Congress including Reps. Buddy Carter of Georgia, Darrell Issa of California and Claudia Tenney of New York each released statements announcing that they had submitted nominations for Trump.
On June 20, 2025, Trump addressed the subject directly in a post on Truth Social, writing “I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me!”
All in all, these announcements and statements illustrate that Trump’s name has been put forward by qualified nominators. However, as with all Nobel Peace Prize nominations, the committee will not confirm or disclose them for 50 years.
We’ve fact-checked numerous claims regarding Trump and Nobel Peace Prize, including a claim that Trump said he would bomb Norway if he is not awarded the 2025 prize.
Sources:
Baloch, Shah Meer. “Pakistan Debates Trump Nobel Peace Prize Nomination after US Strikes on Iran.” The Guardian, 25 Jun. 2025. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/25/pakistan-trump-nobel-peace-prize-nomination-iran-strikes.
“Carter Nominates President Donald Trump for Nobel Peace Prize.” Congressman Buddy Carter, 24 Jun. 2025, https://buddycarter.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=15733.
Confidentiality – Nobel Peace Prize. 30 Aug. 2021, https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/nobel-peace-prize/nomination/confidentiality.
Congresswomen Tenney Nominates Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize | Representative Claudia Tenney. 30 Jan. 2024, http://tenney.house.gov/media/press-releases/congresswomen-tenney-nominates-donald-trump-nobel-peace-prize.
Criteria for Nominators – Nobel Peace Prize. 30 Aug. 2021, https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/nobel-peace-prize/nomination/criteria-for-nominators.
Hardinges, Nick. “Defusing Claim Trump Warned He’d Bomb Norway If He Doesn’t Win Nobel Peace Prize.” Snopes, 29 Jun. 2025, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/trump-nobel-peace-prize-bomb-norway/.
Hart, Andrew. “Statutes of the Nobel Foundation.” NobelPrize.Org, 9 Aug. 2018, https://www.nobelprize.org/about/statutes-of-the-nobel-foundation/.
Issa Nominates President Trump for Nobel Peace Prize | Representative Darrell Issa. 4 Mar. 2025, http://issa.house.gov/media/press-releases/issa-nominates-president-trump-nobel-peace-prize.
“Netanyahu Says He Nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize. From There, It’s a Secretive Process.” AP News, 8 Jul. 2025, https://apnews.com/article/explaining-netanyahu-trump-nobel-prize-nomination-bb3b0338b85226694ab7064b50f978c8.
Nomination – Nobel Peace Prize. 30 Aug. 2021, https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/nobel-peace-prize/nomination/.
—. 30 Aug. 2021, https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/nobel-peace-prize/nomination/.
security, Ellie Cook is a Newsweek, et al. “Donald Trump Nobel Peace Prize Nomination Withdrawn.” Newsweek, 24 Jun. 2025, https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-nobel-peace-prize-nomination-withdrawn-ukraine-russia-2089818.
“The Official Website of the Nobel Prize.” NobelPrize.Org, https://www.nobelprize.org/. Accessed 18 Aug. 2025.
“Ukrainian MP from Zelensky’s Party Nominates Trump for Nobel Peace Prize.” The Kyiv Independent, 26 Nov. 2024, https://kyivindependent.com/ukrainian-mp-proposes-trump-for-nobel-peace-prize/.
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