Nobel Prizes 2026

NOBEL PRIZES 2026

Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 10 laureates’ work and discoveries range from optogenetics to efforts to promote peace and international law.

Champion for international legal order
The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to International human rights judge Navi Pillay (South Africa) . She was honoured for her lifelong dedication to international law and global justice.
Navanethem “Navi” Pillay has been at the forefront in the development of an international legal order. Ms Pillay was educated in the law and soon began defending activists who stood up against apartheid. She grew up in a family of Indian Tamil descent in Durban, South Africa, where in 1967 she founded her own law firm. In the 1980s she studied at Harvard University and earned her Doctor of Juridical Science degree there in 1988.
Dr. Pillay was appointed to the High Court of South Africa in 1995. Four years later she became a judge and President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), where she gained distinction for her role in establishing that sexual violence and rape as well as the spreading of propaganda could lead to indictment for crimes against humanity and genocide. She was then named to serve as a judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC). From 2008 to 2014 she served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Navi Pillay also chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory from 2021 to 2025, and in 2019 she became an ad hoc judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case in which Myanmar stands accused of genocide.
Who is Navi Pillay, the South African judge who won the Nobel prize?
(The Conversation) To understand more about Pillay and her work, we spoke with Sam Naidu, a feminist and literary scholar with a focus on crime and justice, and the author of a biography of Pillay.

Nobel Prize in Physics 2026
Francis Halzen (USA)
Prize motivation: “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin”

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026
Henri B. Kagan (France) and Kenso Soai (Japan)
Prize motivation: “for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis”

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026
Karl Deisseroth (USA) and Peter Hegemann (Germany) and Georg Nagel (Germany)
Prize motivation: “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics”
He won the Nobel Prize for his work understanding the brain — and his kids are super proud
(CBC) Karl Deisseroth shares the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in optogenetics

Nobel Prize in Literature 2026
Anne Carson (Canada)
Prize motivation: “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature”
Anne Carson has, throughout her entire career, combined poetry writing with translation work and teaching at various universities. Almost all her literary production has centred upon the intersection between the philologist’s obsession with words and the poet’s desire for new meaning. She has herself identified the etymology of words as the starting point for all her work.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2026 to
Robert E. Hall (USA Stanford) and Michael Woodford (USA Columbia U)
Prize motivation: “for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation”