Over the last decade, significant efforts have been undertaken to enhance our understanding of the Southern Ocean and its impacts on the Earth system. However, this region remains one of the most poorly observed on Earth, and there are many uncertainties in estimates of future states and the flow on consequences for the Earth system. This chronic lack of observations was highlighted in a recent community statement, calling for a sustained and coordinated Southern Ocean observing system to provide an understanding for current conditions, inform predictions of future states, and support policies and regulations for the benefit of society. The Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) is a coordinating body to enhance and ensure the delivery of Southern Ocean data across nations, organisations, programmes, and stakeholders, and to provide the infrastructure for organisation of community networks to develop sustained observing systems and syntheses of existing datasets. To achieve this mission and to focus scientific efforts, strategies and key priorities have been developed by the Southern Ocean community in a recent paper. The long-term vision for SOOS is to have a coordinated program integrating cutting-edge autonomous platforms and novel approaches with traditional observing techniques to readily deliver “essential” data to stakeholders.