diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index ade84ac932..f35eae5d47 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -84,6 +84,7 @@ Authors@R: c(
     person("Thibaut", "Assus", role = "ctb"),
     person("Thibaut", "Lamadon", role = "ctb"),
     person("Thomas", "Leeper", role = "ctb"),
+    person("Tim", "Mastny", role = "ctb"),
     person("Tom", "Torsney-Weir", role = "ctb"),
     person("Trevor", "Davis", role = "ctb"),
     person("Viktoras", "Veitas", role = "ctb"),
diff --git a/NAMESPACE b/NAMESPACE
index a52e210ab5..77e44988e4 100644
--- a/NAMESPACE
+++ b/NAMESPACE
@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@ export(all_labels)
 export(all_patterns)
 export(all_rcpp_labels)
 export(asis_output)
+export(cache_engines)
 export(clean_cache)
 export(combine_words)
 export(current_input)
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 0601587563..4cde919fa8 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,5 +1,9 @@
 # CHANGES IN knitr VERSION 1.21 (unreleased)
 
+## NEW FEATURES
+
+- Added a new object `cache_engines` for other language engines to handle caching. See `?knitr::cache_engines` for details (thanks, @tmastny, #1518).
+
 ## BUG FIXES
 
 - `valign` in `kable_latex()` does not put the float alignment to the correct location (thanks, @haozhu233, #1487, #1519).
diff --git a/R/block.R b/R/block.R
index bbf0e174e6..27eabba211 100644
--- a/R/block.R
+++ b/R/block.R
@@ -72,6 +72,7 @@ call_block = function(block) {
         params$engine != 'Rcpp') {
       if (opts_knit$get('verbose')) message('  loading cache from ', hash)
       cache$load(hash, lazy = params$cache.lazy)
+      cache_engine(params)
       if (!params$include) return('')
       if (params$cache == 3) return(cache$output(hash))
     }
diff --git a/R/engine.R b/R/engine.R
index 2b8bac4671..4cc6359b47 100644
--- a/R/engine.R
+++ b/R/engine.R
@@ -31,6 +31,26 @@
 #' names(knit_engines$get())
 knit_engines = new_defaults()
 
+
+#' Cache engines of other languages
+#'
+#' This object controls how to load cached environments from languages other
+#' than R (when the chunk option \code{engine} is not \code{'R'}). Each
+#' component in this object is a function that takes the current path to the
+#' chunk cache and loads it into the language environment.
+#'
+#' The cache engine function has one argument \code{options}, a list containing
+#' all chunk options. Note that \code{options$hash} is the path to the current
+#' chunk cache with the chunk's hash, but without any file extension, and the
+#' language engine may write a cache database to this path (with an extension).
+#'
+#' The cache engine function should load the cache environment and should know
+#' the extension appropriate for the language.
+#' @references See \url{https://github.com/rstudio/reticulate/pull/167} for an
+#'   implementation of a cache engine for Python.
+#' @export
+cache_engines = new_defaults()
+
 #' An output wrapper for language engine output
 #'
 #' If you have designed a language engine, you may call this function in the end
@@ -178,6 +198,15 @@ eng_python = function(options) {
   }
 }
 
+cache_eng_python = function(options) {
+  if (isFALSE(options$python.reticulate)) return()
+  # TODO: change this hack to reticulate::cache_eng_python(options) after
+  # https://github.com/rstudio/reticulate/pull/167 is merged and released
+  if (!'cache_eng_python' %in% ls(asNamespace('reticulate'))) return()
+  fun = getFromNamespace('cache_eng_python', 'reticulate')
+  fun(options)
+}
+
 ## Java
 #  e.g. see http://cran.rstudio.com/package=jvmr
 
@@ -637,6 +666,8 @@ knit_engines$set(
   python = eng_python, julia = eng_julia
 )
 
+cache_engines$set(python = cache_eng_python)
+
 get_engine = function(name) {
   fun = knit_engines$get(name)
   if (is.function(fun)) return(fun)
@@ -649,6 +680,12 @@ get_engine = function(name) {
   }
 }
 
+cache_engine = function(options) {
+  cache_fun = cache_engines$get(options$engine)
+  if (!is.function(cache_fun)) return()
+  cache_fun(options)
+}
+
 # possible values for engines (for auto-completion in RStudio)
 opts_chunk_attr$engine = as.list(sort(c('R', names(knit_engines$get()))))
 opts_chunk_attr[c('engine.path', 'engine.opts')] = list('character', 'character')
diff --git a/man/cache_engines.Rd b/man/cache_engines.Rd
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..343553fc36
--- /dev/null
+++ b/man/cache_engines.Rd
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+% Generated by roxygen2: do not edit by hand
+% Please edit documentation in R/engine.R
+\docType{data}
+\name{cache_engines}
+\alias{cache_engines}
+\title{Cache engines of other languages}
+\format{An object of class \code{list} of length 5.}
+\usage{
+cache_engines
+}
+\description{
+This object controls how to load cached environments from languages other
+than R (when the chunk option \code{engine} is not \code{'R'}). Each
+component in this object is a function that takes the current path to the
+chunk cache and loads it into the language environment.
+}
+\details{
+The cache engine function has one argument \code{options}, a list containing
+all chunk options. Note that \code{options$hash} is the path to the current
+chunk cache with the chunk's hash, but without any file extension, and the
+language engine may write a cache database to this path (with an extension).
+
+The cache engine function should load the cache environment and should know
+the extension appropriate for the language.
+}
+\references{
+See \url{https://github.com/rstudio/reticulate/pull/167} for an
+  implementation of a cache engine for Python.
+}
+\keyword{datasets}