Failure mechanisms of welded joints under fatigue loads are interpreted that multiple collinear surface cracks initiating randomly along the weld toes propagate under the mutual interaction and coalescence of adjacent two cracks. To estimate fatigue crack propagation life for three types of the representative welded joints, i.e. non-load carrying cruciform, cover plate and longitudinal stiffener joint, the stress intensity factors at the front of the surface cracks have to be calculated, which are influenced strongly by the geometry of attachments, weld toes and the crack shapes. For the effective calculation of the stress intensity factors the Mk-factor was introduced which can be derived by a parametric study performed by FEM considering influence of the geometrical effects. The fatigue life of the cruciform joint was estimated by using the Mk-factors and the method considering the propagation mechanisms of the multiple surface cracks. Analysis results for the fatigue life had a good agreement with that of experiment.