Achieving universal access to clean cooking is essential for improving health, equality, environmental, and other sustainability outcomes. Yet without accelerated action, 1.8 billion people will still lack access to clean cooking in 2030. Research can support the design of evidence-based clean cooking strategies that are tailored to local realities. Here, we propose a research agenda to accelerate clean cooking transitions. Key areas of focus include enhancing modern and clean technologies, developing better and more inclusive planning tools, integrating co-benefits, addressing behavioral and affordability challenges, fostering innovative policy and business models, as well as understanding the political economy of clean cooking. For such research to be effective in empowering local communities, attention to clean cooking needs to be more effectively integrated into educational curricula and embody the principles of interdisciplinary and open science. Collaborative efforts are imperative to drive this transition and achieve significant benefits across sustainable development spheres.