The Public Service Language Centre and Högskolan Dalarna are core partners in a two-year European Socrates Lingua funded project exploring informal and socially situated language learning for adults. The Language Café project (www.languagecafe.eu) draws on the existing and growing café culture around Europe and aims to create a network of language cafés which exist in real cafes and other publicly accessible social spaces. During this session, we will briefly outline the background to the Language Café project, report on progress to date, discuss the major challenges in setting up and sustaining a language café and present some of the support and publicity materials developed by the project. The project partners from the Public Service Language Centre in Vilnius and Högskolan Dalarna will compare examples of language cafés in Lithuania and Sweden. A presentation will follow regarding the different cultural traditions of teaching and teacher-student relationships in the different project partner countries. We will also discuss the meeting between the public and the private sector, i.e. academia and café owners, as well as between academia and the general public. Moreover, issues regarding how different methods of teaching and learning have influenced the success or failure of a language café will be presented.