The origin of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) with energies to beyond 10^20 eV is the most pressing puzzle in high energy astrophysics. The advent of large scale cosmic ray, photon, and neutrino observatories and their combined observations in terms of multi-messenger astronomy have dramatically advanced our understanding of the extreme Universe and have resulted in a number of surprises during the last few years. Key observations include an increasing fraction of intermediate mass nuclei towards the highest energies and first observations of large- and small scale UHECR anisotropies. When accounting also for UHECR propagation effects, first clues about potential source classes can be derived.
This talk addresses some of these recent observations towards identifying the sources of UHECR with a focus on the Pierre Auger Observatory, and discusses selected future directions.