Nobel Season in Sweden: From the October Announcements to Nobel Week

Every autumn, for one week in October, the world’s attention turns to a handful of rooms in Stockholm and one in Oslo. The Nobel Prize announcements are among the few moments when a Swedish press conference is live-streamed around the globe, and the prizes they announce are handed over two months later in the darkest, most festive week of the Swedish year.

For anyone in Sweden, or planning a visit, the Nobel season is easier to follow than it looks. Here is the calendar for 2026, what actually happens at each stage, and what is open to the public.

The 2026 announcement week: 5–12 October

The Nobel Foundation has confirmed that this year’s announcements take place from 5 to 12 October, and that all of them will be broadcast live on the Nobel Prize’s official digital channels (Nobel Foundation press release). The prize-awarding institutions have set the following times:

• Physiology or Medicine: Monday 5 October, 11:30 CEST at the earliest, announced by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet in Solna.
• Physics: Tuesday 6 October, 11:45 CEST at the earliest, at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.
• Chemistry: Wednesday 7 October, 11:45 CEST at the earliest, also at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
• Literature: Thursday 8 October, 13:00 CEST at the earliest, at the Swedish Academy in Börssalen, Källargränd 4, Stockholm.
• Peace: Friday 9 October, 11:00 CEST, by the Norwegian Nobel Committee at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.
• Economic Sciences (formally the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel): Monday 12 October, 11:45 CEST at the earliest, at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Note the phrase “at the earliest”. The committees make their final decisions on the day, and announcements sometimes start a little late. The Peace Prize is the only one with a fixed time. The official schedule, with links to each live stream, is on the Nobel Prize announcement dates page.

How the laureates are chosen

The announcements are the end of a process that started more than a year earlier. According to the Nobel Prize’s own guide to nomination and selection, nominations open in September, when thousands of academy members, professors, scientists, former laureates, members of parliamentary assemblies and others are invited to put forward candidates for the following year. The deadline is midnight on 31 January. From February to September, Nobel committees of five to ten members review the candidates, consult experts and narrow the list; the prize-awarding institutions then make their final choice in October.

Three rules explain much of the speculation that fills Swedish media in early October. No one can nominate themselves. The names of nominees are kept secret for 50 years. And for the Peace Prize, unlike the others, nominators do not need an invitation letter. Any list of “favourites” you read before the announcement is educated guesswork.

The prize itself is substantial. For 2026 the Nobel Foundation has set the prize money at SEK 12.0 million per full Nobel Prize (Nobel Prize money).

Why 10 December

The prizes are not handed over in October. Since 1901 they have been presented on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896 (Nobel Prize award ceremonies and banquets). Nobel’s will split the ceremonies between two countries: the prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine and literature are awarded in Stockholm, and the Peace Prize in Oslo. The economic sciences prize, established by Sveriges Riksbank in 1968, has been presented at the Stockholm ceremony since 1969.

In Stockholm, the ceremony has taken place, almost without exception, at Konserthuset (the Stockholm Concert Hall) since 1926. Speeches present each laureate’s work, and the King of Sweden hands each laureate a diploma and a medal. The evening continues with the Nobel banquet at Stockholm City Hall for about 1,300 people, including 250 students; it has been held there, with a few exceptions, since 1930. In Oslo, the Peace Prize has been presented at Oslo City Hall since 1990, by the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in the presence of the King and Queen of Norway.

Neither the Stockholm ceremony nor the banquet is a public event. Guests are invited, and the Nobel Foundation describes the Stockholm festivities as primarily an academic celebration of science and literature. For almost everyone, the way to watch is on screen.

Nobel Week: what the public can actually do

The days around 10 December are known as Nobel Week. The 2026 programme had not been published at the time of writing, but the Nobel Prize’s page for Nobel Week 2025 shows the typical shape of the week, which ran from 6 to 12 December in Stockholm and Oslo. Several of the events are public or free:

• Nobel Prize lectures. In the days before the ceremonies, laureates give lectures on the history and background of their work. In 2025 they ran from 7 to 10 December in Stockholm and Oslo, and many are streamed.
• Nobel Week Lights. A light festival in which artworks inspired by prize-awarded discoveries illuminate central Stockholm during the winter darkness. In 2025 it ran from 6 to 14 December; in 2024 there were 60 guided tours during the week open to the public.
• Nobel Prize Concert. An annual concert at Konserthuset Stockholm, held on 8 December in both 2024 and 2025.
• Nobel Week Dialogue. A free, day-long event bringing together people from science, society and culture, held on 9 December. It was in Stockholm in 2024 and Gothenburg in 2025.
• Nobel Day at the museum. On 10 December, the Nobel Prize Museum shows the live broadcast from the Stockholm ceremonies and runs guided tours.
• Nobel Creations. An exhibition in which students from Beckmans School of Design interpret each year’s prizes as fashion, opening in early December (5 December in 2025).

In Oslo, the Nobel Peace Center stages its own events, including a special exhibition about the new Peace Prize laureate. Check the official programme once it is published, usually in the weeks before December, before booking anything around a specific event.

The Nobel Prize Museum, year round

If your visit does not fall in October or December, the Nobel Prize Museum is the easiest way into the story. It is in the old Stock Exchange building at Stortorget 2 in Gamla stan. According to the museum’s visitor information, adult admission at the time of writing is SEK 160, and visitors under 18 get in free. It is closed on Mondays; check current opening hours before you go, as they vary through the week and around holidays. Guided tours run daily, and there is an audio guide in eight languages.

A simple Nobel season calendar

• September: nominations open for the following year’s prizes.
• 5–12 October 2026: the six announcements, streamed live.
• Late autumn: the Nobel Week programme is published on nobelprize.org.
• Early December: Nobel Week Lights, lectures, the Nobel Prize Concert and Nobel Week Dialogue.
• 10 December: award ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo, followed by the banquets.
• 31 January: the nomination deadline for the next round.

Nobel Week lands in the same stretch of December as Lucia on the 13th and the start of the Christmas season, which makes it one of the most atmospheric times to visit Stockholm, if also one of the darkest. For more on Swedish life, read our guides to lagom and fika and allemansrätten, or browse the Sweden section.

Reporting: this piece draws on and credits official information published by the Nobel Foundation and Nobel Prize Outreach at nobelprize.org, and the Nobel Prize Museum.