A benchmark example addressing ultimate limit state (ULS) design of an embedded retaining
wall has been specified by the ERTC7 on the occasion of the 6th European Conference on Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering. The main goal of the exercise was to highlight possibilities and limitations of numerical methods for ULS design with particular reference to Eurocode7 (EC7), where three design approaches (DA1, DA2 and DA3) have been specified. These design approaches differ in the way partial factors of safety are introduced in the analysis. However, the exercise was not restricted to the use of EC7 and thus a wide spectrum of results, which are summarized in this paper, could be expected. Some of the 13 submissions did not actually present design values as requested but provided parametric studies showing the influence of various design assumptions or did an analysis using characteristic values, some introduced factors without given explicit reference to a particular code or standard.