Background: Heart failure is a common chronic condition that affects patients’ life situation and puts high demands on self-care and patient participation. Patients often need advanced care due to deterioration of their heart failure symptoms, and one option for care is home-care. Purpose: The aim of this study was to identify and describe participation in care encounters during home visits in heart failure home-care. Methods: This study had a qualitative design. Seventeen patients diagnosed with heart failure and ten registered nurses participated. The patients received structured heart failure home-care from one out of three home-care units in Sweden. Patients gave written informed consent and nurses gave verbal informed consent. Data from nineteen home visits was collected through observations and documented by video-recordings. The verbal communication in these video-recordings was transcribed verbatim and complemented with non-verbal communication. Data was analysed using qualitative content analysis, and the video-recordings and transcribed material was analysed in parallel. Results: Two themes with three and four categories respectively were identified (i) Participation in the care encounter is made possible by interaction, including exchange of care-related information, care-related reasoning, and collaboration, and (ii) Participation in the care encounter is made possible by an enabling approach, including the patient expresses their own wishes and shows an active interest, and the nurse is committed and invites to a dialogue. These two themes are related to each other, but separated by content. Together, they constitute participation in the home-care encounter. Both themes were represented in all observed care encounters, but the extent and depth of each category varied. Conclusion: The heart failure home-care context showed good potential for patient participation as the care encounters were categorised by interaction with mutual influence and an enabling approach reflected in both patients and nurses. The findings could be used for further develop home-care for patients with heart failure. It is important that care is organised and planned so that there is enough space for both parties during the encounter.