Challenges and Opportunities in Understanding Galaxy Formation in the Coming Decades

Galaxy formation is governed by a complex interplay of diverse physical processes that take place over many orders of magnitude of space and time. In this talk, I will highlight what I view as the most important open questions in galaxy formation, and the greatest challenges faced by theoretical models. I will discuss recent progress in the field, and outline how the next generation of multi-wavelength facilities will help answer these questions, and which kinds of theoretical efforts will be needed in order to rise to these challenges.