Hiding certain categories in sidebar

Hi
I want to find out if there is a way to hide certain categories in the sidebar area?
I use the normal “categories” widget to display categories here but there is no way to exclude or hide some categories that I don’t want to display here

On this sample from my site: https://www.travelhippi.com/visa-free-residency-in-panama/ there is a category called “Spanish America” that I want to hide here

Any simple way to maybe do this with code and not a plugin?

Ciska

I was trying this code but it’s not working.

function exclude_widget_categories($args){
$exclude = “5,8”;
$args[“exclude”] = $exclude;
return $args;
}
add_filter(“widget_categories_args”,”exclude_widget_categories”);