For approximately a decade, we have finally entered the era of discoveries of multiply imaged gravitationally lensed supernovae. To date, all cluster-lensed supernovae, very distant, faint and spatially resolved, have been found from space. In contrast, those deflected by individual galaxies have been very compact and bright enough to be identified with wide-field ground-based surveys through the magnification of the ‘standard candles’ method, i.e. without the need to spatially resolve the individual images. We review the challenges in identifying these extremely rare events, as well as the unique opportunities they offer for two major applications: time-delay cosmography and the study of the properties of deflecting bodies acting as lenses.

This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Multi-messenger gravitational lensing (Part 1)’.