The global palm biology community has a highly collaborative culture and meeting together to share our passion for these amazing plants is in our DNA. The earliest international meetings on palm biology were smaller affairs relative to recent World Palm Symposia, but set the tone for all that has followed. Key among these were a symposium at the 1986 Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Botany, soon followed by a meeting at the L.H. Bailey Hortorium at Cornell University in June 1987, to mark the publication of the first edition of Genera Palmarum that year. In June 1997, the New York Botanical Garden hosted a meeting entitled “Evolution, Variation, and Classification of Palms” at which 28 palm scientists came together. A few years later, the European Network of Palm Scientists was formed, establishing a rhythm of informal, annual meetings in a different European location every year, typically with 20 to 50 participants each, which continues to this day. The positive impact on collaboration and integration of palm research due to interactions at EUNOPS cannot be overstated, but while many from outside Europe joined at times, the need for international contact remained. For this reason the first International Symposium on the Biology of the Palm Family (later dubbed the “World Palm Symposium”) was organised in London by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Linnean Society, marking the start of much larger, open meetings with more than 100 attendees each time. The World Palm Symposium has since been held every five years, in May 2010 in Montpellier, France, in June 2015 in Montenegro, Quindío, Colombia and, delayed by one year due to Covid-19, in June 2021 in Rio de Janeiro as a hybrid meeting. Each meeting has been unique, but all have triumphed in bringing our community together to foster new links and collaboration. The torch now passes to Singapore where that same spirit will be championed once again.