Machado returns to Venezuela after 10 months of exile

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado returned to Venezuela on Sunday after being in exile for 10 months.

“Estoy aquí. Con ustedes,” she wrote Sunday on social platform X , which translates to “I am here. With you.”

Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, left the country under the protection of a U.S. rescue team last December. She worked to certify Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election results to prove that fellow opposition leader Edmundo González won against President Nicolás Maduro amid allegations of widespread election fraud.

Machado went into hiding following the ensuing crackdown and was blocked three times during a 24-hour timeframe in September from reentering Venezuela.

Opposition party Unidad Venezuela praised her return, sharing a photo to social media of Machado embracing tearful supporters as others raised their phones to capture the moment. The party said it was time to unite “toward a democratic, peaceful and orderly transition that allows Venezuelans to fully recover their rights and freely decide their future.”

“Her return must mark a new impetus for the struggle to recover democracy, freedom, and popular sovereignty,” the party wrote on X.

“Today is a very important day for Venezuelans,” González wrote on X . “Our sovereign voice returns with her to lead and guide this process! Very soon I will be with you and with her so that our country truly advances toward freedom.”

President Trump, who has supported Machado but not her efforts to run for the presidency in her home country, told CNN that he hoped she was safe and was unaware of her return to Venezuela.

“She gave me her Nobel Prize, so how can I say anything else? And I hope she’s safe,” he said.

The opposition leader was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after Trump vocally campaigned to be nominated for it for his work in ending conflicts around the world. She presented Trump with the award during a visit to the White House in January.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed Machado’s return, saying it was based on “the U.S. supported reconciliation talks which has already seen hundreds of political prisoners freed and hundreds of political opposition figures return from exile.”

“The United States expects the freedoms of all sectors of Venezuelan politics to continue to be respected,” he wrote on X . “Likewise, we expect all political actors to support these talks which represent the best chance Venezuela has had in thirty years to peacefully achieve not just a free and fair election but an enduring democracy.”

Machado previously vowed that she will run for president if her country holds elections before the end of 2026, after U.S. forces captured Maduro in early January. She told other opposition leaders in Panama that they remain committed to Venezuela’s transition of power and to holding free and fair elections.

The Trump administration has publicly backed ruling-party loyalist and Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as Venezuela’s leader following Maduro’s capture. Machado had worked to win over support from the White House and publicly praised the administration’s intervention in Venezuela.

Trump has said that Machado lacks support among Venezuelans and has praised Rodríguez’s willingness to open Venezuela’s oil industry to foreign investors and pursue closer diplomatic ties with the U.S. amid an energy shortage instigated by the Iran war.

“We thank President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the U.S. Government, Congress, and allied governments for their continued leadership and support,” David Smolansky, senior adviser on foreign affairs and security to Machado, said in a statement to The Hill.

“Machado returns to stand with Venezuelans in their pursuit of freedom, democracy, and justice, and to help advance a peaceful, inclusive, and sustainable transition leading to free, fair, and verifiable presidential elections, with guarantees for all,” he added.