At the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on Monday, 5 October 2026, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel. The announcement opened the 2026 Nobel Prize season.
The award recognises discoveries involving light-gated ion channels and optogenetics, a technique that allows scientists to turn the activity of selected nerve cells in a living brain on or off with light.
Light-gated ion channels are proteins that open or close when exposed to light. Their development led researchers to create optogenetics, giving them a precise way to control individual neurons and examine how particular brain circuits shape behaviour, cognition and disease.
The Nobel committee said the work was recognised “for discoveries leading to optogenetics, which makes it possible to switch on, or off, the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain”. It said the method is now used in laboratories around the world to reveal the brain’s mysteries.
Deisseroth is a US neuroscientist and a professor of Bioengineering and Psychiatry at Stanford University. Hegemann is a German scientist based at Humboldt University in Berlin. Nagel is a German biophysicist based at the University of Würzburg.
The Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute medical university selects the medicine laureates. The prize carries an award of 12 million Swedish kronor, equivalent to approximately $1.2 million, to be shared among the three winners.
The prizes will be presented at ceremonies on 10 December. Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Literature and Peace will be announced in the days after the medicine award, followed by the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences on the Monday after.
Last year’s medicine prize was shared by Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell of the United States and Shimon Sakaguchi of Japan for discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.
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