Plate tectonics has revolutionized our understanding of the motions and deformation of the Earth’s surface and provides the framework for reconstructing the evolution of oceans and continents through geological time. Advances in space geodesy, geophysics, and structural geology have provided increasingly detailed observations of the present-day plate mosaic and increasingly precise constraints on its kinematics and deformation. Meanwhile, sophisticated plate reconstruction models and growing archives of marine and continental magnetic data are extending our view of plate configurations further back in time, revealing the continuously evolving nature of the plate network through the repeated formation and dislocation of plates and reorganisation of plate boundaries. In parallel, advances in numerical geodynamics are opening new avenues to investigate how plate tectonics emerges and evolves, and how lithospheric dynamics couple with processes operating in Earth’s deep interior. Yet, six decades of progress have highlighted persistent limitations. Our knowledge of present-day surface deformation remains fragmentary and spatially uneven, with dense measurements restricted to a small fraction of Earth’s surface, calling for broader observational coverage and new acquisition approaches. At the same time, increasingly detailed observations, measurements and numerical models are exposing the limits of plate tectonics as a primarily geometric description of plate motion, challenging the very definition of tectonic plates and highlighting the importance of structural inheritance, rheological heterogeneity and deformation history in shaping planetary surface deformation. We welcome contributions presenting new observations, measurements and constraints on present and past plate motions and deformation, from geodesy and seismology to marine geophysics and paleomagnetism. We also invite new conceptual and modelling approaches that explore planetary surface deformation and plate dynamics, processes operating in the Earth’s deep interior, and their coupling to the evolving plate mosaic.