Search for new physics at the LHC and prospects for new discoveries

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) (Evans and Bryant 2008) at CERN has allowed the ATLAS (ATLAS Collaboration 2008) and CMS (CMS Collaboration 2008) experiments to collect a large amount of proton-proton collision data at 7 TeV and 8 TeV centre-of-mass energies. This dataset was used to discover a Higgs boson at a mass of about 125 GeV. In parallel, an impressive number of searches for deviations from the Standard Model (SM) expectations have been carried out in various physics areas including: Higgs, Supersymmetry and Exotics physics. Representative searches in all of these domains will be presented and their impact on theoretical models beyond the SM assessed. To date, there is no evidence in the LHC data of a signal for New Physics beyond the SM. However, a few legacy 2-3 sigma deviations remain from both experiments, which will be reviewed. After an 18-month shutdown, the LHC is about to deliver collision data at an increased centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. It will be a very exciting time for both the ATLAS and CMS experiments to confirm or rule out the existing deviations from the SM. In addition, the large increase in collision energy will allow much improved sensitivity for various searches, in particular for high mass particles.