The present understanding of edge pedestal structure is reviewed. Pedestal plasma strongly affects fusion power and divertor heat load, and as such, characterization of the pedestal structure has significantly progressed. In high-confinement mode (H-mode) plasmas, the pedestal component plays the role of a boundary condition in determining the core heat transport through profile stiffness. On the other hand, a higher global poloidal beta or Shafranov shift improves the stability of the plasma edge in the low magnetic field side particularly at high triangularity. Toroidal rotation also influences the edge stability boundary. While toroidal flow stabilizes high-n ballooning modes, it destabilizes low-n kink/peeling modes. On the basis of this background, characterization of the pedestal pressure profile has been attempted from a geometrical viewpoint of width, gradient and height. While the pressure gradient is given mainly by the peeling–ballooning stability limit, many experimental results indicate the pedestal width scales approximately as the square root of the poloidal beta at the pedestal. Some supportive experimental results were observed where the kinetic ballooning mode (KBM) was seen as a turbulent transport that exists in the pedestal region and explained the empirical scaling of the pedestal width. A predictive model of the pedestal height (EPED1) has been developed, in which the pedestal height can be consequently estimated by knowledge of the edge magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) stability on the pressure gradient and the KBM transport characterizing the pedestal width.The influence of the metal wall on the pedestal and confinement has intensively been studied in accordance with the decision of the installation of a full beryllium first wall and a full tungsten divertor in ITER. A common pattern among the existing metal wall tokamaks has been found that the pedestal and global confinement are affected by a requirement for increased gas fuelling (to screen high-Z impurity influxes) as well as a change in pedestal characteristics due to a decrease of the low-Z impurity concentration in the pedestal region. The pedestal pressure or temperature, and thus the energy confinement, can be raised by seeding low-Z extrinsic impurities.