The talk summarises recent work that illuminates our understanding of black hole entropy for supersymmetric black holes in Anti-de-Sitter space. We consider supersymmetric $AdS_3\times Y_7$ solutions of type IIB and $AdS_2\times Y_9$ solutions of $D=11$ supergravity. These can arise as the near horizon limit of black strings in $AdS_5$ and and black holes in $AdS_4$ spacetimes, respectively. We explain how novel extremisation techniques enable one to compute physical observables without explicitly solving Einstein equations. This allows one to identify infinite new classes of $AdS_3$/d=2 SCFT pairs, as well obtain a microstate counting interpretation for infinite classes of supersymmetric black holes in $AdS_4$. A sub-class of examples correspond to branes wrapping certain two-dimensional orbifolds known as spindles and this has opened up a new direction in AdS/CFT with novel connections to accelerating black holes.