Barquisimeto, 25 October. Venezuelan opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado has returned home after more than 10 months abroad, she announced on X.
Her post was short: "Venezuela! With you." Supporters greeted her outside the Church of Santa Rosa in Barquisimeto, Lara state; her party, Vente Venezuela, released photos and video. Where and how Machado crossed the border has not been reported. Former presidential candidate Edmundo González confirmed her return and wrote that he would be by her side "very soon".
Machado had tried to return more than once. At the end of June, after two earthquakes, she planned to fly in to help with the recovery, but, she said, the authorities closed the airspace. In September she was, according to US media, blocked from entering three times within 24 hours. Before her arrival, at the end of August, one of her closest aides, Omar González, returned to the country.
Machado supports a presidential election and intends to run. Her return coincides with a transition being led by Washington and the interim government of Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro's vice-president since 2018, whom the Supreme Court made interim president after the US seized him; Machado has had little part in the talks on the transition. A week before her return, on 22 October, her supporters took to the streets of Caracas at her call to demand a free presidential election.
What it means: The leading figure of Venezuela's opposition is back in the country and can directly influence the transition and future elections. This creates competition for the US-backed interim government.
Who benefits: The opposition gains a leader with Nobel standing inside the country. For Rodríguez's interim government, her presence makes it harder to control the transition.
Background: Machado was barred from the 2024 presidential election, and Edmundo González ran in her place. After the election, whose result the opposition disputed, Machado spent 11 months in hiding in Venezuela and in December 2025 secretly left for Norway to receive the Nobel Prize. In January 2026 the US seized the then president, Nicolás Maduro.
