Nobel awards prize money increased, ceremony canceled

STOCKHOLM: The winners of the prestigious Nobel prizes this year will receive an extra 1 million crowns ($110,000) as the prize money had been increased.

The head of the foundation which oversees the awards made the announcement. The prize money will increase to 10 million crowns this year.

“The decision has been made due to the fact that our costs and capital are in a stable relation in a completely different way than previously,” the head of the Nobel Foundation, Lars Heikensten, told local media.

Dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel left around 31 million crowns to fund the prizes, which have been awarded since 1901. The prize amount has varied over time, starting at 150,000 crowns and reaching 1 million crowns in 1981.

The value rose sharply in the 1980s and 1990s, jumping to 9 million crowns in 2000 and 10 million a year later. The global credit crunch of 2008-9 hit the Foundation’s investments and Heikensten, a former central bank chief, was brought in to get its finances in order.

The prize money was cut to 8 million crowns in 2012 only to rise again to 9 million in 2017. Heikensten said the Nobel Foundation would continue to raise the prize money from time to time. Heikensten steps down at the end of this year to be replaced by former Norwegian foreign minister Vidar Helgesen.

Earlier the award organisers announced that the winners of this year’s Nobel Prizes will not get their medals and diplomas presented to them at Stockholm’s concert hall as usual due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The prizes, due to be announced next month, will instead be handed out during a televised ceremony in December with laureates receiving their awards in their own countries.

The Nobel Foundation had already cancelled the glittering banquet which marks the end of the annual festivities in December. It was the first time since 1956 that the banquet had been cancelled.

“We had decided already in spring that we would not have a traditional prize ceremony. But we wanted to wait over summer to see what would happen before we communicated that,” Nobel Foundation Chairman Lars Heikensten told a news agency.

He said that each laureate would receive their prize either at a Swedish embassy or the institution where they work. The ceremony for the high-profile Peace Prize takes place in Oslo as it is chosen by a Norwegian committee.