Given a holomorphic self-map $\varphi $ of $\mathbb {D}$ (the open unit disc in $\mathbb {C}$ ), the composition operator $C_{\varphi } f = f \circ \varphi $ , $f \in H^2(\mathbb {\mathbb {D}})$ , defines a bounded linear operator on the Hardy space $H^2(\mathbb {\mathbb {D}})$ . The model spaces are the backward shift-invariant closed subspaces of $H^2(\mathbb {\mathbb {D}})$ , which are canonically associated with inner functions. In this paper, we study model spaces that are invariant under composition operators. Emphasis is put on finite-dimensional model spaces, affine transformations, and linear fractional transformations.

For an inner function u, we discuss the dual operator for the compressed shift $P_u S|_{{\mathcal {K}}_u}$, where ${\mathcal {K}}_u$ is the model space for u. We describe the unitary equivalence/similarity classes for these duals as well as their invariant subspaces.

Let ${\mathcal{D}}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}}$ be Dirichlet spaces with superharmonic weights induced by positive Borel measures $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$ on the open unit disk. Denote by $M({\mathcal{D}}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}})$ Möbius invariant function spaces generated by ${\mathcal{D}}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}}$. In this paper, we investigate the relation among ${\mathcal{D}}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}}$, $M({\mathcal{D}}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}})$ and some Möbius invariant function spaces, such as the space $BMOA$ of analytic functions on the open unit disk with boundary values of bounded mean oscillation and the Dirichlet space. Applying the relation between $BMOA$ and $M({\mathcal{D}}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}})$, under the assumption that the weight function $K$ is concave, we characterize the function $K$ such that ${\mathcal{Q}}_{K}=BMOA$. We also describe inner functions in $M({\mathcal{D}}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}})$ spaces.

We study the image of the model subspace ${{K}_{\theta }}$ under the composition operator ${{C}_{\varphi }}$, where $\varphi $ and $\theta $ are inner functions, and find the smallest model subspace which contains the linear manifold ${{C}_{\varphi }}{{K}_{\theta }}$. Then we characterize the case when ${{C}_{\varphi }}$ maps ${{K}_{\theta }}$ into itself. This case leads to the study of the inner functions $\varphi $ and $\psi $ such that the composition $\psi \,\text{o}\,\varphi $ is a divisor of $\psi $ in the family of inner functions.

It is shown that given any sequence of automorphisms ${{\left( {{\phi }_{k}} \right)}_{k}}$ of the unit ball ${{\mathbb{B}}_{N}}$ of ${{\mathbb{C}}^{N}}$ such that $\left\| {{\phi }_{k}}\left( 0 \right) \right\|$ tends to 1, there exists an inner function $I$ such that the family of “non-Euclidean translates” ${{\left( I\,\text{o}\,{{\phi }_{k}} \right)}_{k}}$ is locally uniformly dense in the unit ball of ${{H}^{\infty }}\left( {{\mathbb{B}}_{N}} \right)$ .