The effect of the cylinder shape and symmetry of two-dimensional 8-fold photonic quasicrystals (PQCs) is numerically investigated using the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. Results indicate that,when the fill factor remains:i) the property that the bandgap is independent on the direction can be remained;ii) the lower the symmetry of the cylinder shape is,the narrower the bandgap of 8-fold PQCs is. The reduction of the band gap is negligibly small for the hexagon and square cylinder while it reduces more for the triangle cylinder;iii) the lower the symmetry of the ellipse cylinder shape is,the narrower the bandgap of 8-fold PQCs is. However,the variant of the bandgap is very gently.