Real-world laboratories have gained substantially in importance as a format in sustainability and transformation research in recent years in Germany. This increase in significance is associated with the expectation of fostering and experimentally investigating transformations towards sustainability under real-world conditions in a bid to gain knowledge of their dynamics, to identify characteristics of successful transformation processes, and to be able to transfer this knowledge to other cases. Real-world laboratories are usually managed by a scientific partner, enabling use to be made of established procedures and methods in areas such as knowledge integration. Where responsibility for coordinating real-world laboratories lies with practitioner stakeholders, there is promising potential for their deployment. However, it also gives rise to situations, processes and challenges that are new to all parties involved and that have yet to be explored. In principle, experimental approaches that are characteristic of real-world laboratories are not new in the field of sustainable land management and spatial development. However, they are not traditionally alluded to as the real-world For reasons of readability and simplicity, no use is made of the masculine and feminine form when referring to people or job titles in this publication. However, all genders are implied at all times.