The completion of NOEMA phase 1, the first phase of the NOEMA project will be officially celebrated this Wednesday, September 19th. IRAM and its partner institutes have completed the first, decisive step towards one of the most important German-French-Spanish initiatives in astronomy: 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, 10 15-meter dishes currently constitute the observatory and have provided groundbreaking scientific results.