Our multi-wavelength survey of the Shapley supercluster (z \(\sim\) 0.05) covers a contiguous area of 260 h70−2 Mpc2 including the supercluster core. The project’s main aim is to quantify the influence of cluster-scale mass assembly on galaxy evolution in one of the most massive structures in the local Universe. The Shapley supercluster survey (ShaSS) includes nine Abell clusters (A 3552, A 3554, A 3556, A 3558, A 3559, A 3560, A 3562, AS 0724, AS 0726) and two poor clusters (SC 1327-312, SC 1329-313) showing evidence of cluster-cluster interactions. Optical (ugri) and near-infrared (K) imaging acquired with VST and VISTA allow us to study the galaxy population down to m\(^{\star }\) + 6 at the supercluster redshift. A dedicated spectroscopic survey with AAOmega on the Anglo-Australian Telescope provides a magnitude-limited sample of supercluster members with 80 % completeness at \(\sim\) m\(^{\star }\) + 3.