The 2025 winter meeting of the Submarine Escape and Rescue Working Group (SMERWG) took place in Cascais, Portugal 27-31 Jan 25, with 138 delegates attending. As always, this conference provided a great opportunity to discuss SMER related topics with our partner nations enabling us all to enhance the knowledge across the global SMER network as well as creating and extending friendships. Many thanks to our hosts for an outstanding event.