The 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for optogenetics

The Nobel Prize in Medicine, 2026 edition, was awarded on Monday October 5 to the American Karl Deisseroth and the Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for their work on memory using the technique of optogenetics. It rewards the trio “for their discoveries concerning ion channels activated by light and optogenetics”, a method which makes it possible to show how nerve cells shape memories, emotions and behaviors in the brain, announced the Nobel committee, meeting in Stockholm.

This prize kicks off the most followed awards season in the world, the culmination of which will be the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. Last year, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to an American-Japanese trio for their discovery of “guardians of the immune system”.

Literature Thursday

The physics prize will be awarded on Tuesday with the field of meta-materials, and in particular the British John B. Pendry and his “invisibility cloak”, among the favorites. Then the chemistry prize will be announced on Wednesday. The literature laureate, the flagship Nobel distinction, will be revealed on Thursday.

After rewarding the Hungarian Laszlo Krasznahorkai last year, the Nobel Prize in Literature could honor a woman of letters, possibly from Central or Latin America, believe Swedish literary circles.

Argentine Samanta Schweblin, 48, could be one of these potential winners. Just like the American-Antiguan author Jamaica Kincaid. In addition to being one of the most prestigious awards on the planet, the Nobel consists of a diploma, a gold medal and a check for 12 million Swedish crowns, or a little over a million euros.

One year after the Trump saga

The most anticipated is undoubtedly the Nobel Peace Prize, announced on October 9 in Oslo. Donald Trump's campaign for his candidacy placed his committee under unprecedented pressure last year. The sequence was all the more delicate as the 2025 winner, the Venezuelan Maria Corina Machado, subsequently gave her gold medal to the Republican billionaire, judging that he deserved it, after the capture of President Nicolas Maduro.

“There is always a lot of lobbying, even attempts to exert pressure,” admitted Kristian Berg Harpviken, secretary of the Nobel committee, before adding: “We are very used to it.” But this year, the American president has so far been much more discreet.

Among the potential candidates is a joint award to the Save the Children organization and Mykola Kouleba, a Ukrainian children's rights advocate who campaigns for the return to Ukraine of children illegally taken to Russia from the occupied territories. Also cited are Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms (ERR), a vast network of volunteers helping populations facing the dual threats of war and hunger, as well as the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), after a year 2025 was the deadliest on record for the profession. The economics prize will close the Nobel season on October 12.