Nobel Prize 2026: Medicine Monday, Peace on Friday
The first laureate is announced Monday, October 5, in Solna near Stockholm, and six announcements run through October 12. Serbia is on the same time as Stockholm.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is announced tomorrow, Monday, October 5, 2026, at 11:30 a.m. Central European Summer Time at the earliest, which is also the time in Serbia. The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute makes the announcement from the Nobel Forum in Solna, near Stockholm. It opens the week in which all six of this year’s prizes are announced, with the last one, in economic sciences, due on Monday, October 12.
When is each prize announced?
For five of the six prizes the organizers say “at the earliest,” meaning an announcement can start a few minutes late but never early. Only the Peace Prize is announced at a fixed time. All times are Serbian time:
- Medicine: Monday, October 5, 11:30 a.m. at the earliest, Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute, Solna
- Physics: Tuesday, October 6, 11:45 a.m. at the earliest, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm
- Chemistry: Wednesday, October 7, 11:45 a.m. at the earliest, same academy
- Literature: Thursday, October 8, 1:00 p.m. at the earliest, Swedish Academy
- Peace: Friday, October 9, at 11:00 a.m., Norwegian Nobel Committee, Oslo
- Economic sciences: Monday, October 12, 11:45 a.m. at the earliest, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Peace is also the only prize not announced in Sweden: the Norwegian Nobel Committee names its laureate at a press conference at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo. Every announcement is streamed live and free on nobelprize.org, with no registration. Only accredited media representatives can attend in the room, and the Karolinska Institute asked for applications by October 1.
Who is mentioned as a Medicine candidate?
Nominations are secret, so any list of favorites is only an estimate. The best-known such list comes from Clarivate, which publishes its “Citation Laureates” every year, naming researchers whose papers are cited most often. For Medicine in 2026 it listed:
- Daniel Drucker, Jens Juul Holst and Svetlana Mojsov, for the hormone GLP-1
- James Fujimoto, David Huang and Eric Swanson, for optical coherence tomography
- Timothy Springer, for adhesion receptors of the immune system
Clarivate itself says the list is not a forecast for any given year. By its figures, 89 people from earlier lists have gone on to win a Nobel, often after several years.
Two rules narrow the field. A prize can be shared by at most three people, and it is not awarded posthumously. That is why Joel Habener, whose laboratory cloned the proglucagon gene, cannot be part of the GLP-1 conversation: he died on December 28, 2025, at 88. Last year’s Medicine prize was shared by Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi for discoveries about peripheral immune tolerance.
When are the prizes actually presented?
The October announcements should not be confused with the ceremony. Laureates receive their medals, diplomas and prize money on Thursday, December 10, 2026, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. The Peace Prize is presented in Oslo, the others in Stockholm.
The dates are official, but everything said before tomorrow’s announcement about candidates remains guesswork. The Clarivate list does not show who is nominated or what the committee thinks, and this article does not know who will get the call from Solna. The answer arrives tomorrow, at 11:30 a.m. at the earliest.
