Venezuelan Nobel laureate María Corina Machado left the country on Tuesday by boat and traveled to the Caribbean island nation of Curaçao, U.S. officials said, in a secret effort to reach Norway and collect her Peace Prize.

The opposition leader’s allies worked to keep the trip from becoming public to protect her safety.

She was unable to collect her prize in person at Wednesday’s ceremony but said she would travel to Oslo, dispelling concerns about her safety after the Nobel Committee had said it didn’t know her whereabouts.

Traveling to the Norwegian capital risks forcing Machado into exile. She has spent most of the past year in hiding in Venezuela to avoid arrest.

Norway’s King Harald, Queen Sonja, Crown Prince Haakon, Crown Princess Mette-Marit and Princess Ingrid Alexandra listen to the speech of Ana Corina Sosa Machado, daughter of Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who received the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of her mother, in Oslo, Norway December 10, 2025. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

In a phone call with Nobel Committee Chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes, published on the Peace Prize website, Machado said “so many people” had risked their lives for her to travel to Oslo.

“I am very grateful to them. And this is a measure of what this recognition means to the Venezuelan people,” she said, adding that she was about to get on a plane. “We feel very emotional and very honored, and that is why I am very sad and very sorry to tell you that I won’t be able to arrive in time for the ceremony, but I will be in Oslo, and I’m on my way to Oslo right now.”

The Nobel Committee didn’t say when the phone call had taken place, or where Machado was at the time. Earlier in the day, institute head Kristian Berg Harpviken told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK that it had been more complicated than expected to get Machado to Oslo.

“She is living with a death threat from the regime, pure and simple,” he said. “It stretches beyond Venezuela’s borders, from the regime and friends of the regime around the world.”

In Norway, Machado, a longtime prominent opponent of the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, will be reunited with her three children who live outside Venezuela for their safety.

“As soon as I arrive I will be able to embrace all my family and my children that I have not seen for two years, and so many Venezuelans and Norwegians that I know that share our struggle and our fight,” she said.

Her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, accepted the award at Oslo City Hall on her behalf.

“Almost nine million Venezuelans have had to leave,” Sosa said at the ceremony. “And what keeps us moving every day is that love for family and the idea that we will be reunited soon in a free country. And that is what I hope to do with my mother that I haven’t seen in two years as well.”

Machado recently told NRK that she was doing everything possible to travel to Norway and return to her country, despite the challenges of both leaving and re-entering Venezuela.

Machado has been a fearless advocate for democracy in a country that turned from a semi-authoritarian state into a brutal dictatorship in the past 20 years. Announcing the prize, Nobel Committee Chairman Frydnes described Machado as a “brave and committed champion of peace…who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”

A host of U.S. officials and lawmakers as well as foreign leaders, including Argentine President Javier Milei, Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa and Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, had gathered in Oslo to await her arrival.

Machado dedicated her Nobel Prize to the Venezuelan people and President Trump, thanking him for “his decisive support of our cause.”

Speaking on behalf of her mother at Wednesday’s ceremony, Sosa thanked the Venezuelan activists, journalists and artists who have fought for democracy in the country.

The U.S. has been ramping up pressure on Maduro to step aside, with the Trump administration amassing the largest U.S. military buildup in the region in decades off the coast of Venezuela and authorizing deadly strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats.

Trump has threatened more military action against Venezuela, including land attacks.

Trump has also offered Maduro a chance to leave the country, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported, though the 63-year-old Venezuelan strongman hasn’t accepted.

Since Trump returned to the White House in January, Maduro has sought to demonstrate his willingness to work with the Trump administration to stay in power. He has accepted more than 14,000 Venezuelans in deportation flights from the U.S. and released all remaining American detainees.

In May, a U.S.-backed operation extracted five of Machado’s aides who had been living in a besieged Argentine diplomatic residence in Caracas and flew them to U.S. soil, along with the opposition leader’s mother. While the U.S. and the opposition cast it as a clandestine rescue, the Maduro government said it was a negotiated departure.

For Machado, leaving the country carries the risk of diminishing her influence at home, as has happened to several opposition leaders forced into exile in the past. Venezuela’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, has said that Machado will be considered a fugitive if she travels to Norway.

“I want to assure you and every single Venezuelan that I will be back,” she told Norway’s national broadcasting service last week.

Machado, 58, is conservative and cites former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as an inspiration. She has maintained close ties with the Trump administration and Republican presidents going back to George W. Bush, often advocating for Washington to confront the Venezuelan government more forcefully.

Write to Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com and Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com