Nocturnal 
Navi Pillay, the 85-year-old South African judge who once defended Nelson Mandela in court, has won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for her “efforts to promote peace and international law”.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the award in Oslo on Friday morning, with chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes saying a “common thread” ran from Pillay’s early work defending anti-apartheid activists to her decades on the bench at some of the world’s most significant international courts.
Pillay, born in Durban to a bus driver and raised during apartheid, became the first non-white woman to start her own law practice in South Africa’s Natal Province back in 1967, and later the first non-white woman appointed as a High Court judge in the country, as reported by the BBC.
She has since served as a judge and president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, sat on the International Criminal Court, spent six years as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and until recently chaired the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which last year concluded that genocide was occurring in Gaza. She told Agence France-Presse at the time that her team had shared “thousands of pieces of information” with ICC prosecutors, according to The Guardian.
She currently sits as a judge on the International Court of Justice, which is hearing the case in which Myanmar stands accused of genocide against its Rohingya minority.
Who is Navi Pillay?
The Nobel Committee praised Pillay’s “independence, expertise and steadfastness”, calling her one of the most respected international jurists of her time. Frydnes said that at a moment when wars are rising and international courts are “under political attack”, the committee wanted to stress that lasting peace depends on the rule of law.
Pillay herself seemed genuinely stunned by the news. In an impromptu response, she said: “It must be a joke,” before telling the small gathered crowd: “Your applause means everything to me. But, being a lawyer and a judge, I still want to verify this thing.”
She also joked about the US president, who has repeatedly said he deserves the prize: “If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump.”
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen led the tributes, writing on X that Pillay had “looked the brutality of injustice in the eye and never looked away” and was “the defender of the persecuted, the vulnerable, the voiceless and the excluded”. Shabia Mantoo, spokesperson for the UN’s human rights office, said the award was “testament to the need and to the value of human rights in this world more than ever”.
What happens next
Pillay beat a field that reportedly included Pope Leo XIV and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, with 287 candidates nominated this year, just over a quarter of them organisations. The announcement also means Donald Trump has been passed over again, despite telling reporters on Wednesday that it would be a “great discredit” to the committee if he was overlooked, citing his claim to have ended eight wars.
Last year’s winner, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, caused controversy by handing her medal to Trump in January after the US ousted former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, though the Nobel Committee has pointed out the honour itself cannot actually be transferred.
Pillay is due to formally receive her prize at the Nobel ceremony in Oslo on 10 December.
