In the last 80 years, the number of people in the UK with diabetes has risen from 200,000 to over four million (Nazarko, 2023). People with diabetes have at least double the risk of heart failure than the general population (Kenny and Abel, 2019), with American research indicating that 22% of people who have diabetes have heart failure (Pop-Busui et al, 2022). Most cases of heart failure are diagnosed in hospital, although 40% of people with heart failure have symptoms that the British Heart Foundation (BHF, 2025) comment ‘should have triggered an earlier assessment’. This article examines the link between diabetes and heart failure to update nurses working in primary care on who is at risk, when to suspect heart failure, as well as how it is diagnosed and treated.