Stationary Black Holes: Uniqueness and Beyond

The spectrum of known black hole solutions to the stationary Einstein equations has increased in an unexpected way during the last decade. In particular, it has turned out that not all black hole equilibrium configurations are characterized by their mass, angular momentum and global charges. Moreover, the high degree of symmetry displayed by vacuum and electro-vacuum black hole space-times ceases to exist in self-gravitating non-linear field theories. This text aims to review some of the recent developments and to discuss them in the light of the uniqueness theorem for the Einstein-Maxwell system.