The energy transition of the fishing sector has gained increasing attention in recent years. With focus on Nordic countries, status, trends, opportunities and challenges are summarized to provide recommendations for how to effectively enable an energy transition towards carbon-neutral fisheries. Key challenges today include inadequate data collection and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions, low uptake of available technologies, reversed financial incentives fostering use of fossil fuels, and obstructing fishing regulations. To foster an effective energy transition, short term (before 2030) and long-term actions (before 2040) are identified. Overall, co-developing effective roadmaps for the energy transition of a highly diverse sector will be essential.