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As part of its official prerogatives, the European Union supports the development of the most isolated regions, referred to as “ultra-peripheral” regions. The aim of this support is to offset the constraints stemming from geographical isolation. The French overseas department of Réunion benefits from this status owing to its distance of 9,000 kilometres from mainland France. The development processes of these ultra-peripheral regions are often atypical compared with the mainland. The fast-paced socio-economic development of Réunion after its departmentalisation in 1946 led to a demographic transition resulting in extremely rapid population ageing. The ageing of the population, set to continue in the coming decades, comes hand in hand with a deep-seated transformation in the conditions of individual ageing resulting from health, medical, economic and social progress. The experience of ageing in 2050 will no doubt be entirely different from that of ageing in the 2000s. Looking beyond purely demographic aspects, a range of socio-economic variables are harnessed here to point to the major transformations over the long term and their impact on how we age. The main findings reveal profound transformations in the objective conditions of individual ageing since the mid-20th century and also in the perception of ageing rooted in territorial idiosyncrasies. This is why programmes and policies are being adapted and are now factoring in these specificities.