The session ‘Shallow and Deep Foundations’ of the 8th International Conference on Physical Modelling in Geotechnics 2014 featured a large variety of foundations for onshore and offshore structures with an emphasis on single piles. With a total number of 37 papers, the session was the largest of the conference. In the scope of the session report, the papers are classified into different categories, namely ‘Foundation types and structures’, ‘Modelling techniques’ and ‘Load level and load type’.