María Corina Machado returned to Venezuela: how it happened and what could come next

Seven attempts. By air, by sea and by land. A boat was canceled, a landing was denied… and this Sunday María Corina Machado returned to Venezuela.

"I'm here. With you." That's how she announced it.

First: the return

She reappeared in a church in Lara state, west of Caracas. People clapped, cried and chanted "María, María!". From there she set off in a motorcade toward the capital, amid flags and cries of "freedom".

According to her party, she had tried seven times before. A chartered boat canceled the trip, and a plane heading to Curaçao was denied permission to land. The Venezuelan government denies having blocked her.

Second: how she ended up in exile

To understand it, we have to go back to 2023. María Corina won the opposition primaries, but she was disqualified and couldn't run.

Edmundo González ran in her place. According to the tally sheets gathered by the opposition, he won by more than double. But the electoral council, controlled by the chavistas, proclaimed Nicolás Maduro the winner.

Protests followed, with more than two thousand people detained. She spent eleven months in hiding inside Venezuela.

Third: the Nobel

In October 2025, still in hiding, she won the Nobel Peace Prize. In December she secretly left the country and reappeared in Oslo for the ceremony.

And in January something almost nobody expected happened: the U.S. military captured Maduro in Caracas and took him to New York, charged with drug trafficking. Days later, María Corina gave Donald Trump her Nobel medal, as a token of gratitude.

Fourth: what's happening now

Since Maduro's fall, Delcy Rodríguez, who was his vice president, has been governing with Washington's approval.

The Supreme Court allowed her to govern for ninety days, extendable for another ninety. But that extension was never voted on, and ten months later she's still in power, with no election date.

Ten months after Maduro's fall, Venezuela still has no election date.

Trump said he knew nothing about the return. And his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, insists that institutions must be rebuilt before voting.

María Corina returns with a clear goal: getting an election date set now. The big question is whether she'll be able to move freely, or whether her return will become a risk.