BRICS Summit 2026 Live: Putin in New Delhi for the BRICS summit, to meet PM Modi
Heads of state and government of BRICS member countries — including Russia, China, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia — arrived in New Delhi ahead of the 18th BRICS Summit, hosted under India's 2026 chairship.
Bilateral engagements between the host country and individual visiting delegations were held on the summit's sidelines alongside the main multilateral proceedings.
The gathering was one of the first full leaders'-level summits bringing together the bloc's 2024-25 expansion cohort — countries from West Asia, Africa, and Southeast Asia — alongside the five founding members in one setting.
The summit followed BRICS' standard annual handover format, with the chairship having passed from the previous host to India for calendar year 2026.
The BRICS "Troika" Mechanism and Rotating Chairship
Because BRICS has no constitutive treaty, permanent secretariat, or standing budget, continuity across chairship years is managed informally through a "troika" — an arrangement, modelled on a similar G20 practice, in which the immediate past chair, the current chair, and the incoming chair coordinate to keep priorities consistent across transitions.
Key Details
- The chairship rotates annually among member countries roughly following the BRICS acronym sequence, running 1 January to 31 December each year; India assumed the chair on 1 January 2026, succeeding Brazil's 2025 chairship, which itself followed Russia's 2024 chairship.
- For 2026, the troika comprises Russia (2024 chair), Brazil (2025 chair), and India (2026 chair) — the three countries jointly shepherding continuity of the bloc's agenda into the New Delhi summit.
- Unlike the UN or WTO, BRICS has no headquarters or secretariat-based bureaucracy; each chair country's own government machinery (via its Sherpa and Finance Track officials) runs that year's entire meeting calendar and drafts the leaders' declaration.
- The summit's outcome document — a consensus-based political "Declaration," not a binding treaty — is the bloc's principal deliverable, requiring unanimous agreement among all member states before release.
The arrival of multiple heads of state/government in Delhi for the summit is the culmination of a full troika-coordinated chairship year; the informal, rotating, secretariat-free structure is precisely what makes each host country's own preparatory machinery (rather than any BRICS institution) responsible for organising an event of this scale.
Strategic Profile of the 2024-25 Expansion Cohort
BRICS's 2024 and 2025 expansions added members spanning West Asia, Africa, and Southeast Asia, each bringing a distinct strategic significance tested separately in GS Paper 1 (geography) and GS Paper 2 (IR) contexts.
Key Details
- Iran — joined 1 January 2024; is also a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO, joined 2023), giving it overlapping membership in both China/Russia-anchored blocs alongside BRICS.
- Egypt — joined 1 January 2024; controls the Suez Canal, a chokepoint carrying a significant share of world seaborne trade, and was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM, 1961), linking BRICS rhetorically to the older non-alignment tradition.
- Ethiopia — joined 1 January 2024; hosts the African Union's permanent headquarters in Addis Ababa, making it a natural bridge between BRICS and continental African diplomacy despite not being Africa's largest economy.
- Indonesia — joined 1 January 2025, as the first Southeast Asian full member; it is ASEAN's largest economy by GDP and had itself chaired the G20 in 2022, giving it dual-track multilateral experience relevant to BRICS' own G20-parallel institutional structure.
- The United Arab Emirates also joined in the 2024 cohort; Saudi Arabia was invited in 2024 but has not completed formal accession.
The Delhi summit is the first full leaders' gathering to bring this entire expanded roster together with the founding five, making the composition of the attendee list itself a direct test of "which countries joined BRICS, and when."
Full Membership vs "Partner Country" Status
The Kazan Summit (Russia's 2024 chairship) created a new, lower participation tier called "Partner Country," distinct from full membership, giving invited states limited access to BRICS platforms without the complex consensus required for full accession.
Key Details
- Partner Countries announced from the 2024 Kazan Summit (effective 1 January 2025) include Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, and Uzbekistan; Vietnam was added subsequently as a partner country in 2025.
- Partner Countries are generally invited to the Leaders' Summit itself but do not automatically participate in every ministerial-level or working-group meeting, unlike full members.
- This tier is distinct from the informal "BRICS Outreach/BRICS+" format used since 2017, under which the host country invites additional Global South leaders as guests for specific summit sessions without any standing status.
- Full membership requires consensus of all existing full members, while Partner Country status was designed as a lighter-touch entry point amid over 30 countries expressing interest in some form of association with the bloc.
Any Partner Country representatives present in Delhi alongside full-member heads of state illustrate this two-tier structure in practice — a distinction UPSC frequently tests by asking which countries are full BRICS members versus partners versus one-off summit guests.
- 18th BRICS Summit: New Delhi, hosted under India's 2026 chairship (chairship period 1 January-31 December 2026).
- 2026 BRICS troika: Russia (2024 chair), Brazil (2025 chair), India (2026 chair).
- 2024 expansion cohort (effective 1 January 2024): Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates; Saudi Arabia invited but accession not completed.
- Indonesia: full member effective 1 January 2025, the bloc's first Southeast Asian full member.
- Partner Country tier created at the Kazan Summit (October 2024): includes Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and (from 2025) Vietnam.
- BRICS has no constitutive treaty, permanent secretariat, or standing budget; annual chairship rotation and the troika mechanism substitute for permanent institutional machinery.