BRICS
BRICS has grown from an informal four-country grouping into an 11-member bloc with standing financial institutions and a structured annual coordination cycle, ahead of India hosting the 18th Leaders' Summit in New Delhi on September 12-13, 2026.
The grouping operates without a founding treaty or permanent secretariat, relying instead on a rotating annual chairship and consensus-based decision-making across ministerial tracks, working groups and the leaders' summit.
India's 2026 chairship year has run a "Sherpa track" of official-level coordination meetings across multiple Indian cities, culminating in the leaders' summit and a joint outcome declaration.
The summit tests how a now much larger and more diverse membership sustains consensus-based governance without the weighted-voting or treaty structures used by institutions such as the IMF or World Bank.
The "Troika" and Rotating Chairship Mechanism
Unlike organisations with a permanent secretariat (e.g., the UN or WTO), BRICS governance rotates annually among full members, with the outgoing, current and incoming chairs informally described as forming a "troika" that ensures continuity of agenda-setting across consecutive summit years.
Key Details
- The chair for a given year hosts the leaders' summit and sets the year's priority themes, coordinating ministerial meetings (finance, foreign affairs, trade) and working groups across the year.
- Chairship sequence for recent/upcoming summits: South Africa (2023, Johannesburg) → Russia (2024, Kazan) → Brazil (2025, Rio de Janeiro) → India (2026, New Delhi).
- India has now chaired BRICS four times: 2012 (New Delhi), 2016 (Goa), 2021 (virtual, during the COVID-19 pandemic) and 2026 (New Delhi).
- Decision-making across all tracks is by consensus among members, not majority or weighted voting — a structural feature distinguishing BRICS from Bretton Woods institutions.
The 2026 summit's "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability" theme reflects India's prerogative as chair to set the year's agenda, a role that will pass to the next chair after New Delhi under the same rotating structure.
New Development Bank (NDB) and Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA)
BRICS's two standing financial institutions were both established through agreements signed at the 6th BRICS Summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, on July 15, 2014, giving the grouping concrete institutional weight beyond periodic summit declarations.
These institutions represent BRICS's shift, over more than a decade, from a discussion forum into a bloc with functioning multilateral-finance infrastructure — a distinction relevant whenever a summit's declarations are compared against its institutional track record.
BRICS Compared to Other Plurilateral Groupings
BRICS is one of several major non-treaty-based plurilateral groupings that India participates in; UPSC frequently tests the ability to distinguish these by membership, origin and institutional depth.
Key Details
- G20: broader membership (19 countries + EU + African Union), rotating presidency, India hosted in 2023 (New Delhi, also at Bharat Mandapam); focused on global economic governance.
- G7: seven advanced economies (US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan) plus the EU; often used as a comparator bloc in "multipolarity" discussions against BRICS.
- Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO): founded 2001, Eurasian security and economic grouping; India and China are both full members, giving it partial membership overlap with BRICS.
- Unlike the WTO or UN, none of BRICS, the G20, the G7 or the SCO operate on binding treaty obligations enforceable through a judicial or quasi-judicial mechanism.
As India hosts BRICS for the fourth time (having also hosted the G20 in 2023), the summit is being read as part of India's broader pattern of leveraging chairships of multiple plurilateral groupings to project its Global South and multipolar-order positioning.
- 18th BRICS Summit: September 12-13, 2026, Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi — India's 4th chairship (after 2012, 2016, 2021).
- Recent chair sequence: South Africa (2023) → Russia (2024) → Brazil (2025) → India (2026).
- NDB and CRA both established July 15, 2014 (Fortaleza Summit); each backed at US$100 billion.
- CRA contribution shares: China $41bn; Brazil, India, Russia $18bn each; South Africa $5bn.
- NDB headquarters: Shanghai, China.
- SCO founded: 2001; India and China are both full members alongside Russia, Pakistan and Central Asian states.