The fall of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s led to a huge demand for English language teaching and for training in areas such as management and law.  The British Council responded by expanding its activity across the region, and by helping the UK Government to develop its Know How Fund for Eastern Europe.  The end of the Soviet Union saw a similar pattern further east, with new offices, projects and English teaching centres being set up in most countries of the former Soviet Union by 1995, and a big expansion in Russia itself.

Demand for English teaching continued to grow worldwide, with many new teaching centres set up in Western Europe, East and South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

From the mid-1990s onwards, internet-based and other electronic forms of communication became increasingly important, both as information resources and in developing new types of teaching and learning materials.  By the early 2000s, this had led to an increasing number of British Council services being available on-line, but also to new 'Knowledge and Learning Centres' in British, designed to combine the best of virtual, distance and personal interaction.  The first such centre was launched in Delhi in January 2002.

11 September 2001 brought renewed attention of the world to the importance of building understanding across countries and cultures, and the disastrous effects when this does not happen.  In the US and elsewhere, people recognised the importance of the work of organisations such as the British Council in building the necessary bridges of understanding and trust. The British Council itself gave priority to its new project Connecting Futures, which brings together young people from the UK with those from countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.