Why Trump thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and why it’s complicated

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 will be announced in October of that year. Until then, Trump’s name joins a long and confidential list.

In 1978, after 13 days of secret talks at Camp David, US President Jimmy Carter walked Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin into the White House Rose Garden. The moment marked the signing of the Camp David Accords, the first peace agreement between Israel and an Arab nation. Sadat and Begin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the following year. Carter, despite playing a crucial role, would only receive his Nobel decades later.

Fast forward to 2025. Donald Trump is putting himself forward for the same honour, but more openly. Repeatedly.

In a recent Truth Social post, Trump expressed frustration that he hasn’t been recognised, despite claiming credit for several diplomatic breakthroughs. “I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do,” he wrote. Then came a list: Congo and Rwanda, India and Pakistan, Serbia and Kosovo, Egypt and Ethiopia, Israel and Iran, and even Russia and Ukraine.

The latest of these, a reported peace agreement between Congo and Rwanda, is expected to be signed in Washington. Pakistan, meanwhile, has formally announced it will recommend Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, citing his “decisive diplomatic intervention” during the recent India-Pakistan standoff.

India, however, strongly refuted the claim. The Ministry of External Affairs dismissed suggestions of foreign mediation, making it clear that no third party was involved.

This isn’t Trump’s first brush with the Nobel. In 2020, he was nominated by a Norwegian lawmaker for the Abraham Accords, agreements that normalised ties between Israel and several Arab nations, including the UAE and Bahrain. The accords were widely seen as a diplomatic win, but they weren’t signed in the context of active war. Analysts noted they represented strategic realignments, not traditional peace settlements.

That raises a key question: What exactly qualifies as a Nobel Peace Prize-worthy achievement?

According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the prize should go to someone who has done "the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." Over time, the Nobel Committee has broadened its interpretation to include nuclear disarmament, human rights work, and humanitarian diplomacy.

Among US presidents, only four have received the Peace Prize:

Theodore Roosevelt (1906): For mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War.
Woodrow Wilson (1919): For founding the League of Nations after World War I.
Jimmy Carter (2002): For decades of peacebuilding and human rights advocacy.Barack Obama (2009): For early efforts to strengthen global diplomacy.

Former Vice President Al Gore also received the prize in 2007, alongside the IPCC, for raising global awareness about climate change.

Trump, however, believes his contributions go further. Beyond the Abraham Accords, he claims credit for efforts in Ukraine, Iran-Israel backchannel diplomacy, and South Asia. But most of these assertions remain either incomplete or unverified. The Congo-Rwanda agreement, while in progress, is not yet signed. His India-Pakistan claim has been publicly denied. His claims of involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict come even as hostilities between the two nations have escalated into open warfare, and his calls for a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire have not resulted in formal outcomes.

Even his former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, offered a blunt view. “He wants the Nobel because Obama got one,” Bolton wrote on X, adding that Trump had not brokered any confirmed peace resolution in South Asia or Eastern Europe.

To be clear, Trump’s strongest case remains the Abraham Accords. While not forged in wartime, they did reflect multilateral coordination and changed diplomatic equations in the Middle East. But whether that meets the Nobel standard is up to the five-member Norwegian committee, which evaluates sustained, evidence-backed peace efforts, not just public claims.

Trump’s diplomatic style, high-visibility, deal-oriented, and media-driven, has been markedly different from the quiet, years-long negotiations behind many past laureates. Whether that approach qualifies or disqualifies him remains to be seen.

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 will be announced in October of that year. Until then, Trump’s name joins a long and confidential list.