<p>Stone cladding is a common building facade in various building structures, and the arch kerf connection is widely used in natural stone cladding. However, the loading capacity and structural design method are not clearly understood such that the breaking load of this connection is generally overestimated, which results to frequent rupture failure. Four groups of arch kerf connections with different panel depths and insertion lengths in sandstone and granite claddings are constructed, and monotonic loading tests are performed in a laboratory. A corresponding finite element model (FEM) is built numerically. The two typical failure modes, namely, the ring failure and triangle failure, are defined based on the geometry of the rupture surface. The two failure modes appear accidentally and cannot be predicted easily because the imperfect internal surface conditions in the arch kerf are irregular. Triangle failure appears more often than ring failure in the granite connections, whereas considerable ring failure appears in the sandstone connections. The rupture angles at the top and side of the connection are closely correlated with the stone materials and failure modes. In general, the shapes of the load–displacement curves obtained from the FEM are consistent with those of the experimental curves. Skeleton curves are constructed based on the experimental loading curves. The progressive failure of each type of connection is demonstrated in the skeleton curves, whose shapes are consistent with those of the loading curves obtained from the FEM. Two expressions are developed to compute the breaking loads of the two failure modes in the arch kerf connection. The experimental breaking loads are correctly predicted using these two expressions with acceptable accuracy. The panel depth and stone material significantly affect the breaking load, whereas the effect of the insertion length is negligible. This study is beneficial to the structural design of stone claddings.</p>