After 25 years from its inception by Freeman in 1984, the stakeholder approach enjoys support from a growing community of researchers and practitioners. In this article, we try to outline this development by carrying out a meta‐analysis within the leading project management journals. We found that stakeholder theory is predominantly fed by articles from Anglo‐American countries and applied in the construction and IT sectors. The understanding of the stakeholder notion is moved towards a more complex view. Articles from different project management areas indicate the key role of stakeholders in projects.