This year’s Nobel Prize winners are gathering in Stockholm, Sweden, to deliver their lectures and receive their gongs and their 10 million Swedish kroner cheques.

However, future prize winners may have to make do with a slightly smaller sum. According to Michael Sohlman, executive director for the Nobel Foundation, the Nobel coffers still haven’t fully recovered from the recent financial crisis.

“It might be in the future we would be forced to lower the prize,” he says (Reuters). “We have sailed the storm, but have taken on some water.”

The foundation’s assets apparently lost around 20% of their value during the crisis, although they have recovered slightly since.