In an attempt to explore the idiomatic dimension of academic English, the paper focuses on spoken multiparty interaction among non-native speaker students and teachers engaging in academic discourse (i.e., seminars, group work). Examining the data from the ELFA (English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings) and SELF (Studying in English as a Lingua Franca) corpora, compiled in Helsinki, the author identifies distinctive patterns of ELF involving idiomatic language and describes their structural and functional characteristics in cross-cultural academic interactions. The paper also discusses idiomatic variation and creativity (Pitzl 2009) along with unilateral idiomaticity (Seidlhofer 2009), and tries to assess the role of figurative language in successful communication in cross-cultural settings.