- India
- Sep 11
New Delhi gears up for 18th BRICS Leaders’ Summit
• The 18th BRICS Leaders’ Summit will be held in New Delhi on September 12 and 13, with India hosting the meeting as chair of the grouping.
• The summit will be attended by leaders of 11 member countries and 10 partner countries besides some international organisations.
• Under India’s Chairship this year, over 350 meetings and high-level engagements have been held in over 25 cities across India to further strengthen the BRICS strategic partnership across three fundamental pillars:
i) Political and security
ii) Economic and financial
iii) Cultural and people-to-people exchanges.
• India is a founding member of BRICS, and has previously held its chairship three times in 2012, 2016 and 2021.
• India assumed its fourth BRICS chairship on January 1, 2026.
• The year 2026 also marks a significant milestone as BRICS completes 20 since its establishment.
• India has previously chaired BRICS in 2012, 2016 and 2021.
The BRICS nations
• The BRICS nations or Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa form the key pillars of south-south cooperation and are the representative voice of emerging markets and developing countries in the global forums such as the G20.
• The grouping has become a 11-nation body now with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia joining it as new members.
• The acronym BRIC was first used in 2001 by Goldman Sachs in their Global Economics Paper, ‘The World Needs Better Economic BRICs’ on the basis of econometric analyses projecting that the four economies would individually and collectively occupy far greater economic space and would be amongst the world’s largest economies in the next 50 years or so.
• The leaders of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries met for the first time in St. Petersburg, Russia, on the margins of the G8 Outreach Summit in July 2006. Shortly afterwards, in September 2006, the group was formalised as BRIC during the First BRIC Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, which met on the sidelines of the General Debate of the UN Assembly in New York City.
• After a series of high level meetings, the first BRIC summit was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia on June 16, 2009.
• It was agreed to expand BRIC into BRICS with the inclusion of South Africa at the BRIC Foreign Ministers meeting in New York in September 2010. Accordingly, South Africa attended the third BRICS Summit in Sanya on April 14, 2011.
• In 2015, the BRICS established the New Development Bank (NDB) with the purpose of mobilising resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in emerging markets and developing countries.
BRICS presidency
• The BRICS presidency rotates annually according to the letters of its acronym.
• Each presidency term begins on January 1 and concludes on December 31 of the respective year.
• The country holding the presidency sets the priorities of the agenda for that year.
• It also organises the group’s annual Summit and steers key ministerial and working group meetings.
Expansion of BRICS
• BRICS leaders have left the door open to future enlargement as dozens more countries voiced interest in joining a grouping.
• Around 40 countries had shown interest in joining BRICS out of which 23 formally applied for the membership.
• In August 2023, the top BRICS leaders at the grouping’s summit in Johannesburg approved a proposal to admit six countries, including Argentina, into the bloc with effect from January 1, 2024. However, Argentina’s President Javier Milei announced withdrawing his country from becoming a member of the BRICS.
• The expansion was accompanied by the creation of a Partner Country category. Ten countries joined this framework during 2025: Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. The new arrangement provides an additional channel for structured engagement with BRICS.
• The decision to expand the bloc is seen as an effort to reshape global governance while putting the voices of the Global South as a key priority area to advance the overall development agenda.
• The BRICS has emerged as an influential grouping as it brings together 11 major emerging economies of the world, representing around 49.5 per cent of the global population, around 40 per cent of the global GDP and around 26 per cent of the global trade.
• Its expanded membership has also widened its geographical reach across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
• This diversity brings together major markets, natural resources, technological capabilities and varied development experiences.
• BRICS has emerged as a key platform for coordinating economic policy among major emerging economies.
• It serves as the principal forum where these nations shape a common position on global governance.