Friday 09 / October / 2026
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 goes to a person who with exceptional courage and integrity has led the way towards a more comprehensive global legal order. South African human rights lawyer Navanethem "Navi" Pillay has been instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.
Born in 1941 into an Indian-origin family in Durban, Pillay grew up under apartheid and became one of South Africa's first women of Indian descent to practice law. She defended anti-apartheid activists and fought against discriminatory prison conditions.
After apartheid, she became a judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where she helped establish landmark legal precedents recognizing rape as an act of genocide. She later served as a judge at the International Criminal Court and as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014.
More recently, she chaired a UN commission investigating human rights violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The 2026 Nobel winners
This week, laureates have already been named in medicine, physics, chemistry, and literature. The Nobel week will conclude on Monday with the announcement of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
The winners of this year's Nobel prizes
Medicine: Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for discoveries that provide new insights into how we might treat blindness, depression, addiction and dementia.
Physics: Francis Halzen for his contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and discovery of high-energy neutrinos, described as "ghostly messengers from space."
Chemistry: Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai for their groundbreaking discoveries related to the origin of chirality and life's building blocks.
Literature: Anne Carson for her "bold and inventive oeuvre" that combines the classical with the modern.
