How the Nobel Prize Works: Secrets, Money and Controversies

The most important phone calls in science go out this week. Starting Monday, October 5, 2026, six Nobel Prize announcements will roll out over eight days, each one naming new Nobel Prize laureates — people, and sometimes organizations — judged to have done the most for humanity in their field. You have seen the headlines before: a songwriter wins literature, a sitting president takes peace after nine months in office, an entire year's literature prize gets cancelled. But how does the Nobel Prize actually work? Who makes the call, where does the money come from, and why do the peace and literature prizes — the two that feel least like lab work — end up mattering most to young people? This is the full explainer.

The Nobel Prize week: what gets announced when

• Monday, October 5, 2026 — Medicine, 11:30 CEST (5:30 a.m. ET): the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet in Solna opens the week.
• Tuesday, October 6, 2026 — Physics, 11:45 CEST (5:45 a.m. ET): the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.
• Wednesday, October 7, 2026 — Chemistry, 11:45 CEST (5:45 a.m. ET): the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences again.
• Thursday, October 8, 2026 — Literature, 13:00 CEST (7:00 a.m. ET): the Swedish Academy, the friendliest hour for the Americas.
• Friday, October 9, 2026 — Peace, 11:00 CEST (5:00 a.m. ET): the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo — the only announcement made outside Sweden, and the only one with a fixed time.
• Monday, October 12, 2026 — Economic Sciences, 11:45 CEST (5:45 a.m. ET): the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences closes the week.

Every announcement streams live and free on the Nobel Prize's official channels, according to NobelPrize.org, whose published schedule carries the standard "at the earliest" qualifier on every reveal except peace. For the full hour-by-hour viewing plan, see our Nobel announcement week watch guide.

Who actually decides

It starts with a will. Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist who built his fortune on dynamite, directed that his estate fund prizes for those who conferred the greatest benefit to humankind — five categories in his 1895 will: physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace, according to Reuters. The sixth prize is the odd one out: the prize in economic sciences, established in 1968 by Sweden's central bank for its tercentenary and awarded alongside the others, according to Reuters.

Each prize has its own electorate: the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences chooses physics, chemistry, and economic sciences; the Swedish Academy chooses literature; the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet chooses medicine; and a five-member committee appointed by Norway's parliament chooses peace — which is why the peace announcement comes from Oslo while everything else comes from Stockholm, according to Reuters.

The process is a masterclass in secrecy. Nominations close in early February, committees deliberate through spring and summer, and the final votes land in the weeks before the announcements. Nominees are not named publicly; archives open to researchers only decades later. Most laureates learn they have won from a dawn phone call.

The money behind the medal

This year the Nobel Prize payout got a raise: twelve million Swedish kronor per prize — about one point two million dollars — up from eleven million last year, as reported by NordiskPost. The Foundation tied the increase to the 125th anniversary of the first awards in 1901, when each prize was worth 150,782 kronor. Its executive director, Hanna Stjärne, said the raise protects the award's long-term financial value.

The money flows from Nobel's own estate, invested and grown by the Nobel Foundation for more than a century — the dynamite fortune, still paying out. When a prize is shared, the sum is split. Winners also receive a gold medal and a hand-crafted diploma, presented in Stockholm by Sweden's king on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death, while the peace laureate is honored the same day in Oslo, according to Reuters. The amount has not always climbed: the foundation cut it from ten million kronor to eight in 2012, then raised it three times on the way back, as reported by NordiskPost.

The controversies are part of the institution

No honest explainer of the Nobel Prize skips the misfires. In 2009 the peace prize went to Barack Obama less than nine months into his presidency; critics called it premature and political, as documented by NPR in its survey of the prize's mixed record. In 1973, Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho shared the peace prize for the Paris accords — two committee members resigned in protest and Tho refused the award, saying the ceasefire was not being honored, according to NPR.

Literature has its own awkward history. Bob Dylan won the 2016 prize, then took more than two weeks to acknowledge it and skipped the ceremony, as reported by NPR. Two years later the Swedish Academy postponed the 2018 literature prize to 2019 amid a sexual-assault scandal — the first skipped year since 1943, according to NPR. And Reuters' primer notes the omission many rank as the committee's greatest: Mahatma Gandhi never received the peace prize before his 1948 assassination, according to Reuters.

The point is not that the prizes are broken: honoring the greatest benefit to humankind is a judgment call made by a handful of people, in secret — and judgment calls age in public.

Why the Nobel Prize still matters most to young readers

The science prizes tend to reward discoveries decades old by the time Stockholm calls. Peace and literature reward meaning — and meaning is what young people are shopping for. The Nobel Prize has repeatedly amplified young voices: Malala Yousafzai was seventeen when she shared the 2014 prize for girls' education, the youngest laureate in the prize's history, as reported by Education Week. This year's chatter points the same way: markets tracked by TheLines have Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms and Doctors Without Borders leading the 2026 peace board — humanitarian work, not statecraft, according to TheLines.

Literature is the most personal of the six. A physics breakthrough takes a doctorate to appreciate; a novel takes an evening. When the Swedish Academy names a writer, the winner's books land on reading lists within hours — and the Dylan pick proved its definition of literature stretches as far as song lyrics. For a generation that treats reading as identity, it is the one prize that can change your nightstand by December. It is also why these two prizes absorb the most criticism: everyone has an opinion about peace and books in a way few do about condensed-matter physics. The debate is the feature, not the bug.

The ceremonies take place December 10, 2026 — the peace prize in Oslo's City Hall, the rest in Stockholm's Concert Hall, followed by a banquet for some thirteen hundred guests, according to Reuters. Between now and then, six phone calls will mint new Nobel Prize laureates — researchers, a writer, and a peacemaker turned household names. That is the real tradition behind the Nobel Prize: not perfection, but a yearly referendum on what humanity should celebrate. For more explainers in this vein, browse our deep dives topic page.