The study of regular black holes and black hole mimickers as alternatives to standard black holes has recently gained significant attention, driven both by the need to extend general relativity to describe black hole interiors, and by recent advances in observational technologies. Despite considerable progress in this field, significant challenges remain in identifying and characterizing physically well-motivated classes of regular black holes and black hole mimickers. This paper provides an overview of these challenges, and outlines some of the promising research directions — as discussed during a week-long focus program held at the Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe (IFPU) in Trieste from November 11th to 15th, 2024.
