On 12th and 13th September 2026, leaders from 11 countries representing nearly half the world’s population and 40 per cent of the global economy gathered in India for the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi. Chaired by Indian Prime Minister Modi, marking BRICS’s 20th anniversary and India’s fourth time hosting, the summit was structured around the theme “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability.” With a focus on a people-centric and humanity-first approach, India’s year-long chairship hosted over 350 meetings centred on economic growth, trade, finance, technology, and sustainable development, alongside geopolitical issues including those in West Asia and Ukraine.

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Interestingly, the summit is comprised of countries that have competing visions and geopolitical alignments. India and China, for instance, the founding members of BRICS, have had persistent border tensions, escalating most seriously in the Galwan Valley in 2020 and leading to fatalities on both sides. The UAE and Iran were present as well, both members of BRICS and who are continuing to be directly affected by the West Asian war. There are also other contentious issues around BRICS, such as ‘de-dollarization’, or reducing the reliance on the US Dollar for trade and financing, which has led BRICS to be seen as a vehicle for countering Western financial dominance.

In this context, the most interesting outcome was perhaps the summit itself: BRICS offered an institutional space where countries could communicate and hold meetings despite strategic competition. Modi held separate bilateral talks with both Xi and the Iranian President Pezeshkian on the sidelines. The adoption of the New Delhi Declaration also saw the consensus between Iran and the UAE on “exercising maximum restraint, as well as avoiding actions that could further aggravate the situation,” which is being hailed as an unambiguous victory for diplomacy. The Declaration also condemned the April 2025 Pahalgam attack (a diplomatic victory for India), criticised unilateral tariffs/sanctions without naming the US, endorsed local-currency payment interoperability (and steered clear of mentions of de-dollarization). The Declaration called for global governance reform, with India’s UNSC membership bid being backed up by both Russia and China.

The successful conduct of the BRICS summit........

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