We study the interplay between colour-confining and chiral symmetry-breaking dynamics in gauge-fermion systems with a general number of flavours and colours. We connect the QCD-like regime, in quantitative agreement with lattice data, with the perturbative conformal limit, thereby exploring an uncharted region of theory space. This analysis is conducted within the first-principles functional renormalisation group approach to gauge-fermion systems and is facilitated by a novel approximation scheme introduced here. This allows us to investigate the entire landscape of many-flavour theories and to provide a cartography of their phase structure. In particular, we uncover a novel phase with the locking of confining and chiral dynamics at intermediate flavour numbers. We also explore the near-conformal region that displays walking behaviour. Finally, we provide a quantitative estimate for the lower boundary of the conformal Caswell-Banks-Zaks window. This work offers a self-consistent framework for charting the landscape of strongly interacting gauge-fermion theories necessary to reliably study strongly coupled extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics.
