The NWP SAF has reached an important milestone this week. Twenty years ago, on 25 November 1998, the agreement was signed for the creation of the SAF on Numerical Weather Prediction. It was led by the UK Met Office with ECMWF, Météo France and KNMI as partners. Following a period of development, the NWP SAF became operational in 2004, and has been providing satellite data processing software and monitoring services to users ever since. In the latest phase DWD joined the SAF, replacing KNMI which consolidated its NWP activities in the OSI SAF. The focus of the NWP SAF over the next few years will be on developments to enable the exploitation of the next generation of European polar orbiter and geostationary satellites by the NWP and wider research communities.