To date, research into the synthesis of solar fuels and valuable chemicals has focused on developing materials that are efficient, cost-effective and durable. Despite significant progress, it is still unclear how devices capable of artificial photosynthesis would look like at an industrial scale, and if they would be economically competitive with well-stablished, non-renewable energy conversion technologies. Addressing this requires coordinated progress across multiple disciplines, including materials science, (photo)electrochemistry, electrochemical engineering, and optics and also different time- and length-scales, spanning from the atomic to the industrial scale. These efforts are usually complemented with numerical modelling to guide system design and optimisation, and life cycle analyses to assert the technical and economic system viability. Excitingly, the field is now beginning to transition from laboratory-based studies to investigations under real and varied conditions, including outdoor operation on Earth under concentrated, direct, or diffuse irradiance, across a range of pressures, unconventional chemical substrates, and even within extraterrestrial environments. While these atypical environments unlock a wider range of applications beyond standard one-sun water splitting, they bring added technical challenges that must be addressed for effective deployment in real environments. These emerging directions set the stage for the topics explored in this symposium