Over the past 25 years, the role of simulators has increased dramatically within Dutch Maritime Education and Training (MET) in parallel with new educational insights like competency-based learning. Research demonstrated that the learning efficiency for certain competences is higher in the simulator instead of that made during sea time. Relevant trends and developments that will affect MET in the future relate to maritime innovations, safety, simulator developments, human factors and didactic insights. Both sea time and simulator training contribute to the development of competencies, each having specific benefits and drawbacks. Within a balanced training program the optimal combination of on board experience, and simulator practice with online and offline learning, leads to an effective development of competences.