Using the finite element method, this paper investigates lateral stress-induced propagation characteristics in a pho-tonic crystal fibre of hexagonal symmetry. The results of simulation show the strong stress dependence of effective index of the fundamental guided mode, phase modal birefringence and confinement loss. It also finds that the contribution of the geometrical effect that is related only to deformation of the photonic crystal fibre and the stress-related contribution to phase modal birefringence and confinement loss are entirely different. Furthermore, polarization-dependent stress sensitivity of confinement loss is proposed in this paper.