Pile foundations often suffer excessive bending stresses induced by the vibra-tory deformations and the corresponding interactions of the seismic waves. Such soil-pile mutual interaction is termed as kinematic interaction and is crucial in case of liquefiable soils as additional stresses may be induced on the pile. This article aims to investigate the kinematic response of a single pile and 2×2 pile group embedded in liquefiable soil. Dynamic beam on nonlinear Winkler foundation approach (BNWF) has been adopted herein, incorporating the liquefaction behavior of soil with the hyper-elastic bilinear model. First, the BNWF model is validated against the centrifuge results. A liquefiable soil profile located in a highly active seismic region of India has been considered. Nonlinear effective stress ground response analyses were performed to account for the pore pressure generation using the experimentally derived dynamic soil properties. Seismic analysis has been performed through nonlinear time history analysis on the chosen pile configurations. An abrupt contrast in the peak bending moment has been observed at the vicinity of liquefied and nonliquefied interfaces due to the sharp stiffness contrast. The pile group showed significantly better seismic performance in terms of reduced peak displacements and bending moments compared to the single pile response, in case of liquefiable soils. © 2019 Associazione Geotecnica Italiana, Rome, Italy.