Kinetic Alfven Waves (KAWs) are dispersive Alfven waves with perpendicular wavelengths comparable to microscopic kinetic scales of plasma particles such as the ion (or ion-acoustic) gyroradius and the electron inertial length. They have parallel wavelengths much longer than the ion inertial length because their frequencies are well below the ion cyclotron frequency. Due to these distinct scale characters, KAWs can play an important role in various active plasma phenomena, such as the acceleration of auroral energetic electrons, the heating of solar coronal plasmas, and the formation of filamentous structures in the Earth’s magnetosphere as well as in the solar wind and the solar atmosphere. Since the 1990s, experimental studies in both laboratory and space plasmas have dramatically advanced our knowledge of KAWs, and some important progress has been made both in theories and applications of KAWs. In this session, we will focus on KAWs in solar and heliospheric plasmas and cover theories, observations, and applications of KAWs from the solar atmosphere to the solar wind to planetary magnetospheres. We believe that KAWs are an increasingly interesting topic that can be associated with various phenomena in solar and heliospheric plasmas, such as field-aligned electron acceleration and cross-field ion heating in the auroral plasma, vortices and particle transport in the magnetopause, nonuniform heating of plasmas in the solar lower-atmosphere, the anisotropic and mass-charge dependent heating of minor heavy ions in the extended solar corona, anomalous wave-particle dissipation in magnetic reconnection, and the formation of filaments, turbulence and dissipation of AWs in the solar atmosphere and the solar wind, etc. This session will provide a forum of communication for researchers who are interested in this topic.