This paper presents the results of experimental and numerical studies on the bearing capacity behaviour of an eccentrically loaded strip footing resting on geosynthetic-reinforced sand. The investigations were carried out by varying the footing width, load eccentricity, type of reinforcement and the relative density of the sand. Furthermore, finite-element analysis was conducted to evaluate the benefits of using reinforcement under eccentrically loaded strip footing. The results indicate that the footing width and load eccentricity have a great effect on the bearing capacity factor N_γ values. For 1g models, the footing width B would be >110 mm, which is the smallest width of model foundation that should be used to determine the ultimate bearing capacity. At a load eccentricity (e/B) equal to 0·1, the ultimate bearing capacity increased by about 38 and 67% when the sand was reinforced with geotextile and geogrid, respectively. The difference between the ultimate bearing capacities obtained from the experimental results and numerical analyses varied from 10 to 14%. From prototype-scale numerical results, it was evident that the geogrid reinforcement increased the ultimate bearing capacity by about 12–24% when the load eccentricity (e/B) varied from 0·0 to 0·3.