US President Donald Trump has renewed his criticism of Norway and the Nobel committee after failing to win the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, calling the decision disgraceful and embarrassing and claiming it had damaged Norway's reputation.
“The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t,” Trump told supporters at a campaign rally in Syracuse, New York. He described the snub as “just another sign of how Norway and all these others are ripping off our country”.
Trump's remarks came hours after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded this year's prize to Navi Pillay, a South African judge and human rights lawyer.
Pillay serves as an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. She previously served as an appeals judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Last year, she chaired a UN commission investigating Israel's military campaign in Gaza, which concluded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government had committed genocide against Palestinians. Israel strongly rejected the finding.
At the rally, Trump dismissed Pillay as a “mystery person” and “a liberal person who works at the United Nations, who nobody has ever heard of”.
“I never heard of the person. Nobody did … I know a lot of people. I’ve never heard of this particular person. But congratulations anyway,” he said.
Pillay was attending the Nuremberg Forum, a gathering on international law in the German city where Nazi leaders were tried after World War II, when she learned she had won the prize. The announcement was greeted with applause.
“If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump,” Pillay joked.
Trump has repeatedly expressed disappointment over his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He campaigned actively for the award in 2025, arguing that his diplomatic interventions had helped resolve several international conflicts.
The Nobel committee instead awarded the 2025 prize to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. She later presented her Nobel medal to Trump, prompting the Nobel Institute to clarify that the prize could not be revoked, shared or transferred.
“This is an indelible stain on the country of Norway and those people that made such a disgraceful and embarrassing decision,” Trump said on Friday.
He listed several conflicts he claimed to have helped resolve and said he had prevented potential wars between North and South Korea and between Japan and North Korea, without providing supporting evidence.
“The Nobel Peace Prize has been forever discredited by a handful of radical ideologues who are anti-democracy and really enemies of civilisation. And we will not forget, Norway,” he said.
Hours after Pillay was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Trump administration announced fresh sanctions against the International Criminal Court, which the White House has long accused of unfairly targeting the US and Israel.
It was not immediately clear whether the sanctions were linked to the Nobel announcement.
The measures would impose financial penalties on entities doing business with the ICC. US allies, including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada and Japan, warned that the move could have a “significant impact” on the court, its staff and their families.
