Over the last two and a half decades, ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has made a profound impact on our understanding of the Universe. The construction of these facilities in Chile’s Atacama Desert started in the early 1990s. The first of the telescopes to be completed, the Unit Telescope 1, started observing the skies in 1998, 25 years ago. Since first light in 1998, astronomers have produced over 10 000 scientific papers using data collected by VLT telescopes, an average of more than one peer