Challenges to the Cosmological Model

I will present a personal view of the status of the cosmological model, starting with a selective history of some of the major theoretical and observational milestones that have brought us to our current understanding. I will then try to survey the list of observations that are either in tension or outright disagreement with the simplest standard cosmology: do these indicate the need for a radical overhaul of our theoretical framework? But even if the answer to this question is ‘no’, the standard model leaves many open questions to do with why the universe is the way it is, and I will try to assess our chances of providing better answers to these fundamental puzzles.