About one in five older Australians were born overseas. However, there has been very little information published in Australia or internationally about dementia in persons from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds. This limits our ability to plan for and provide evidence-based medical care, social care and aged care services to persons from CALD backgrounds. This paper describes challenges to conducting CALD dementia research; these include sampling, having valid instruments and costs. Nine key research recommendations in the areas of epidemiology, community knowledge, carers, service delivery, screening and assessment, medical management, residential aged care and minority CALD reached by consensus by an expert group are presented. The paper closes with some strategies to encourage CALD research. The material presented here will provide guidance for future research endeavours.