The commissioning of the MAX IV synchrotron radiation facility in Lund marks the dawn of a new generation of storage-ring-based light sources. This new generation delivers one order of magnitude higher performance and allows realization of groundbreaking experiments on a variety of systems and materials at the atomic and molecular levels. This paper reviews the conceptual basis of the MAX IV design, briefly summarizes the most recent accelerator commissioning results and focusses on exploring a future development path for the MAX IV 3 GeV storage ring aimed at achieving the diffraction limit at hard x-ray wavelengths.
