Geotechnical engineering is subject to large uncertainties, not only due to spatially variable and uncertain ground conditions, but also due to significant model uncertainties involved in the design and assessment of geotechnical structures. There is increasing awareness that explicit treatment of uncertainties through uncertainty quantification and reliability analysis can be of great benefit to geotechnical engineering practice. Furthermore, the Eurocodes are reliability-based and will in their new versions facilitate reliability verification through probabilistic methods explicitly. This special session strives to highlight recent advances in probabilistic approaches to geotechnical problems and thereby to further advance the uptake of reliability methods in practical applications. Examples are probabilistic site characterization or reliability-based design and assessment of geotechnical structures.