Only a few hours remain until the announcement of the new winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy will reveal the name of this year’s laureate at exactly 1 PM Central European Time (2 PM Cairo time). The Nobel Prize in Literature is one of the most prestigious literary awards worldwide, given annually to a writer, poet, or thinker who has made a distinguished literary contribution “showing an ideal direction,” according to the will of dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896).

Since its inception in 1901, the prize has been awarded to more than 120 writers from various continents, including the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, who won it in 1988, remaining the only Arab laureate to date.

The winner’s name will be announced from the Academy’s headquarters in the old Stockholm Stock Exchange building, amid wide global attention from media, intellectuals, and publishers.

The Nobel Prize in Literature honors novelists, poets, and playwrights, but the list of laureates also includes three philosophers—Rudolf Eucken, Henri Bergson, and Bertrand Russell—a historian, Theodor Mommsen, and a statesman (Winston Churchill for his political speeches). In 2013, Alice Munro became the first writer primarily known for short stories to win.

The prize sometimes takes on political dimensions, standing against totalitarian regimes. Several exiled or banned writers in their home countries have won the prize, including Miguel Ángel Asturias, Boris Pasternak, Pablo Neruda, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Gao Xingjian.