The completion of NOEMA phase 1, the first phase of the NOEMA project was officially celebrated on Wednesday, September 19th. The Max Planck Society and its partner institute IRAM have completed the first, decisive step towards one of the most important German-French-Spanish initiatives in astronomy: upgrading the NOEMA observatory in the French Alps and developing the most powerful and most sensitive telescope at millimetre wavelengths in the Northern hemisphere. Four years after the inauguration of the first NOEMA antenna, ten 15-meter dishes currently constitute the observatory and have provided ground-breaking scientific results.