A wave basin experiment has been performed to investigate the interactions between multi-directional focused wave and vertical bottom-mounted cylinder. In this paper, a study on wave run-up on a vertical bottom-mounted cylinder is presented. For all experimental cases, the ratio of the water depth and cylinder diameter ratio (d/D) is equal to 2.0 and the ratio of the wave height and water depth (2A/d) is varied in the range of (0.12, 0.60), where A is the focused amplitude. The experimental results showed that the focused wave parameters, including wave steepness, frequency bandwidth, and directional spreading index, had significant impacts on the wave run-up on a cylinder. More specifically, the focused wave run-up increased as these parameters increased, and the maximum value of the measured wave run-up ratio could be as high as 1.68. The variations of the multi-directional focused wave run-up around the cylinder were also analyzed. The wave run-up at the front of the cylinder was greater than that at the other positions around the cylinder. The wave run-up reached the lowest values at 135°. The associated focused wave parameters also impacted the wave run-up distribution around the cylinder. ► We studied the multi-directional focused wave run-up on a vertical cylinder. ► We investigated the impacts of wave parameters on the wave run-up. ► The focused wave run-up increased as wave steepness, frequency bandwidth increased. ► A unidirectional wave can generate larger wave run-up than a multidirectional wave. ► The wave parameters also impacted the wave run-up distribution around the cylinder.