There has been a tremendous progress in the last ten years in our understanding of general relativity in the strong field regime. This has been possible due to a better understanding of the mathematical structure of the Einstein equations, the development of perturbation methods and the use of numerical techniques. Thanks to this progress, now general relativity has the potential of becoming a new tool in areas of physics that go beyond the traditional astrophysical setting. In this talk, I will review some of these recent developments and their impact in areas of astrophysics and beyond, and I will outline new directions for future research in which numerical relativity is likely to play an important role. I will also present a new tool, GRChombo, which should allow us to address some of the outstanding problems in the field.