This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of private actors work with stakeholder dialogue in Sweden by identifying important factors that affect how an architectural firm manages participation in early stages of urban planning. The study consists of a literature study of previous research on dialogue and participation as well as a case study consisting of interviews with architects at the architectural firm and direct observations during a dialogue process carried out by the architectural firm on behalf of a property developer. A significant factor appears to be that there are no democratic principles governing how they work with participation, it is their clients. The architects say they want to involve citizens in their design process and that they have their client's support in this. In practice, however, they involve citizens and other stakeholders to a very small extent, and when they do, there is lack of representation and the way the dialogue activities are conducted also affect what information and what perspectives that appear. It appears to be more important for the architects to hold dialogue with officials at the municipality's planning department to influence the municipality's planning process, than to work for increased participation.