Plant plasticity is essential to provide plants with the most adequate physiological mechanisms to face climate stochasticity. Both biodiversity conservation and food security lie on our current understanding of physiological plasticity to project the impacts of climate change and establish mitigation strategies. In this article, we focus on the evolutionary role of plasticity, its costs and limits, molecular basis and the physiological mechanisms allowing the expression of the most adequate plant phenotype in response to the major current climate change drivers. Furthermore, we provide novel insights into the most common approaches and methods used to study and evaluate plasticity, using plant photoprotection as an example. It is concluded that much progress has been made in the role of plasticity in plant responses to climate change, although further insights into stress memory, sensory mechanisms, and the plant responses to multiple environmental stresses is still required to better understand plant responses to climate change.