María Corina Machado Parisca (born 7 October 1967) is a Venezuelan politician and industrial engineer. A prominent leader of the Venezuelan opposition, she served as a member of the National Assembly of Venezuela from 2011 to 2014.
Machado entered politics in 2002 as a founder of the vote-monitoring organization Súmate. She is the National Coordinator of the political party Vente Venezuela. In 2012, she was a candidate in the opposition presidential primary but lost to Henrique Capriles. During the 2014 Venezuelan protests, she was a leading figure organizing demonstrations against the government of President Nicolás Maduro.
In 2023, Machado won the opposition primary election to become the unity candidate for the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election. However, she had been disqualified from holding public office by the Comptroller General of Venezuela in June 2023, a ruling upheld by the Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela in January 2024. As a result, she was replaced as the candidate first by Corina Yoris and later by Edmundo González Urrutia.
In August 2024, Machado announced she had gone into hiding, stating she feared for her life and freedom under the Maduro government.
Machado has received international recognition for her activism. She was named one of BBC's 100 Women in 2018 and was listed among Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2025. In October 2025, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy."
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