The 2025 Stornoway conference brought together participants from Scotland, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Norway in the town of the same name for discussions about sustainable futures for North Atlantic island communities. The focus was on locally initiated development initiatives, youth engagement, housing challenges and the need for long-term, place-specific solutions. The conference identified a need for local buy-in, better access to financing and new ways of measuring prosperity, such as well-being and cultural value. The results were presented at the Arctic Circle conference in Reykjavík, in the hope that they would inspire concrete recommendations and lead to closer collaboration in the North Atlantic and the Arctic.