Drawing on material from IRE as well as other sources, this article describes how the the notion of lifelong education came into prominicence in the educational world in the late 1960s, how it related to the concepts of formal, non-formal and informal education, and how it contrasted with the idea of recurrent education, as promoted by the OECD. The author goes on to discuss the emergence of the broader and more holistic concept of lifelong learning and the various ways in which it is understood. The article shows how IRE and its host institute have played an important part in the debate on these issues.