President Donald Trump has been passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize once again, failing to win the award just 48 hours after declaring that no one in its history deserved it more than he did.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, a five-member panel appointed by Norway's parliament, announced on Friday that the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize will go to Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, an 85-year-old South African human rights lawyer, in recognition of her work in the field of international justice and human rights, according to The Washington Post.

The decision marked another blow for Trump, whose yearslong campaign to win the prize has been a fixture of his political life. Pillay appeared to poke fun at that effort even as she celebrated her own victory.

"If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump," Pillay joked in a clip from the event, as her colleagues cheered and applauded.

Her comment came roughly two days after Trump made yet another public pitch for why he believed he had earned the honor. "I settled eight wars," Trump insisted, claiming that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, last year's laureate, had told him nobody in the history of the prize was more deserving.

"I'm not bragging; I'm just telling you the facts," Trump said at the time. He also alleged that the Nobel Committee had shown bias toward him and warned that failing to weigh his diplomatic achievements would bring the organization into disrepute.

Despite those claims, many of the conflicts Trump says he settled remain active. The Israel-Gaza war and fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo are still ongoing, and Trump remains entangled in the war in Iran, which has now lasted months longer than the timeline he once said he would need to finish the job.

Pillay's own legal career spans South Africa's apartheid years, proceedings at international war crimes tribunals, and work with the United Nations. Before serving as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights — a post she reached after presiding over the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and sitting as a judge on the International Criminal Court — she played a role in establishing landmark legal precedents on genocide and sexual violence in the context of armed conflict.

Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, praised Pillay's contributions while stressing the importance of international accountability.

"Peace requires justice," Frydnes declared during Friday's announcement.

That framing echoed the language of the 1895 will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, which directs the prize to the person who has done "the most or the best work for fraternity between nations."

Friday marked the second time Trump has been passed over for the prize. In an unusual episode in January, Machado presented him with her Nobel medal at the White House after receiving the 2025 award, though the Nobel Committee later made clear that it may not confer the prize on anyone else, no matter who holds the physical medal.

This year, the committee reviewed 287 nominations before settling on Pillay. Nominations come from a qualified pool that includes national lawmakers, university professors, and past laureates, and the full list is kept confidential for 50 years — meaning the remaining 2026 candidates will not be made public until 2076. The award, which comes with a prize sum of about $1.2 million, will be formally presented to her at a ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death and the date on which the peace prize is awarded in Oslo while the other Nobel prizes are handed out in Stockholm.