TORONTO — Mark Carney built a global profile in 2026 by standing up to U.S. President Donald Trump. If some prediction-market traders and prominent admirers are right, the Canadian prime minister could end the year with the Nobel Peace Prize and Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
Carney briefly became the favorite Monday for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize on Kalshi, a U.S.-based prediction market, when traders on the exchange put his chances at 14%. His odds later fell, illustrating the highly speculative nature of the wagering.
There is no public evidence Carney is on the Nobel Committee’s secret shortlist for the prize that will be announced Oct. 9 in Oslo, Norway.
But the buzz about the Canadian leader possibly winning the esteemed peace prize reflects the message that has raised his profile: Middle powers should band together to defend sovereignty as great powers increasingly use economic and military leverage.
Whether that position resonates with the Nobel Committee is impossible to know. One thing is certain, though: the Nobel and Time’s annual award happen to be two honors Trump covets.
Carney and Trump are locked in an escalating trade war, with 50% U.S. tariffs on billions of dollars of Canadian goods and Canadian retaliation. Trump also has told Canadian leaders to “fall in line” or face consequences “far WORSE” than existing tariffs.
Trump, who has twice been Time’s Person of the Year, has repeatedly complained about not receiving the Nobel, saying in July that he “should have won that award more than anybody.”
“President Trump would be furious, of course,” said Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal. “If this ever happens, I would love to be a fly on the wall of the Oval Office to see the president’s face when he learns about it.”
Trump already possesses a Nobel medal, just not one awarded to him.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel laureate, presented Trump with her medal at the White House in January. Trump accepted it, while the Nobel Committee stressed the prize itself remains hers.
“Trump will be unhappy whoever gets the Nobel,” said Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. “If Carney got it, it would make relations with Canada rockier than they are.”
Time already named Carney one of its 100 most influential people of 2026 and specifically noted his popularity increased as he stood up to Trump.
On Tuesday, Carney was the second choice on major prediction markets for Time’s Person of the Year, behind New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The winner will be announced Dec. 10.
Time has described Trump’s cumulative impact as helping create a “new global order” increasingly shaped “not by systems or institutions, but by the will of a single man.” Carney’s answer has been to urge middle powers to band together rather than bend one by one.
New York University professor Scott Galloway said Carney has it in the bag and called him “the leader that Europe’s been looking for for the last 20 years.”
“I believe, hands down, Time’s Person of the Year has already been decided and it’s going to be Mark Carney,” Galloway said.
On Galloway’s podcast, journalist Fareed Zakaria said Carney is winning admiration abroad and has given countries facing a less predictable United States “a kind of language and a path” to build new alliances rather than simply bend to Washington.
Carney’s standing abroad took off in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he declared the old international order was not coming back and urged middle powers to work together rather than wait for its restoration. His speech came as European leaders were confronting Trump’s push to acquire Greenland and tariff threats.
“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Carney said in his speech, which received a standing ovation.
Carney has since tried to put the argument for a new global order into practice, pushing Canada closer to Europe and seeking new partners in Asia as Trump’s tariffs fractured the old Canada-U.S. relationship.
European lawmakers gave Carney another standing ovation this month as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed opening the door for Canada to become the European Union’s first associate member.
“Carney’s international profile has been driven by his standing up to Trump, unlike the Europeans and Asians who rushed to make deals with him,” Wiseman said. “Trump’s pressure on Canada has helped elevate Carney in the eyes of the world.”
