The next science Nobel lands early Wednesday. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will announce the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry at 11:45 a.m. in Stockholm on Oct. 7. That is 5:45 a.m. EDT.

How to watch: The academy will stream the press conference live, and no sign-up is needed. The stream runs from 11:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Stockholm time and will stay online afterward, the academy says.

Recent chemistry prizes went to metal-organic frameworks last year, and before that to protein structure prediction and design and to quantum dots, Chemistry World noted.

Nobody outside the committee knows the winners, but the guessing is a tradition. At a webinar run by C&EN, the American Chemical Society's news magazine, experts shared their picks on Oct. 1.

Amy Prieto of Colorado State University picked Caltech's Harry Gray and Jay Winkler for showing how electrons travel long distances through proteins. Her other pick was David Allara, Ralph Nuzzo and Jacob Sagiv for self-assembled monolayers, ultra-thin coatings that line up on their own. The data firm Clarivate also named all five on its 2026 list of likely winners, C&EN reported.

Fast DNA sequencing was another favorite. Ross King of the University of Cambridge and Chaochao Dun of the University at Buffalo both picked Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman. They split on a third name. King chose Hagan Bayley, and Dun chose Pascal Mayer. Dun also backed the inventors of perovskite solar cells: Tsutomu Miyasaka, Nam-Gyu Park and Henry Snaith.

C&EN readers had their own favorite. Biochemist Chi-Huey Wong, known for building complex sugars and sugar-coated proteins, topped the magazine's reader poll by a large margin. He was also Howes's pick. Webinar attendees, though, voted for DNA sequencing.

Clarivate's David Pendlebury said a prize for an invention or technical feat "seems likely" this year.

What we know: The chemistry prize will be announced at 5:45 a.m. EDT Wednesday.
What we don't: Who wins. Predictions are often wrong.