Four years ago the Cumbre Vieja volcano devastated more than 1,200 hectares of land on La Palma, forever altering the landscape and the lives of its inhabitants. Fourteen years earlier, Neil Armstrong, contemplated the sky of La Palma during the first edition of Starmus, the festival that physicist Stephen Hawking described as “a ray of hope”. Today, facing challenges of uncertainty in the scientific field, Starmus returns to an island that is rebuilding itself looking to the future, with the Meliá La Palma Hotel as the strategic venue for this meeting of brilliant minds.

From April 25 to 28, La Palma brought together eight Nobel Prize winners, renowned scientists such as Jane Goodall and Jill Tarter, astronauts such as Pablo Alvarez and musicians of international scope, in a special edition of Starmus that has strengthened the positioning of the island as a first class astro-tourism destination.

Meliá La Palma Hotel, located in Puerto Naos facing the Atlantic, was the operational center of the festival. The spectacular terrace of the hotel certified as “Starlight” hosted keynote lectures on the future of space, climate change, and the challenges of artificial intelligence, as well as astronomical observations guided by Nobel laureates themselves, in line with the official theme of this edition: “The island of stars”.

The Starmus 2025 program transcended the conferences to turn the whole island into a scientific-cultural stage: the Sonic Universe concert on April 26th filled the Port of Tazacorte; the Starmus Camps science fairs took over Santa Cruz de La Palma and Los Llanos de Aridane; and the historical round table “108’”, held at the Gran Telescopio Canarias, once again brought together astronauts and Nobel Prize winners around the sky of La Palma. These activities reinforced La Palma’s status as an international beacon of scientific dissemination.