The study of hypernuclei can illuminate features that are obscured in conventional nuclear systems and may thus help to understand how nuclear structures - nuclei on small as well as large scales – emerge in a rigorous way from QCD. On one hand hyperons embedded in a nuclear system may serve as a sensitive probe for the nuclear structure and its possible modification due to the presence of a hyperon. On the other hand, hypernuclei may unravel the strength of the hyperon-nucleon and even the hyperon-hyperon strong interaction and their different spin-dependent contributions. Furthermore, hypernuclei present a one-of-a-kind laboratory for the four-baryon, strangeness non-conserving weak interaction.

Electro-production of hypernuclei at JLAB and MAMI offers the unique possibility to probe the Λ wave function. Extremely neutron-rich hypernuclei will be investigated by nuclear collision with stable heavy ion beams and rare isotope beams at GSI and FAIR; copious production of double lambda-hypernuclei by antiproton beams will enable high precision gamma-spectroscopy with the PANDA experiment for the first time.