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Why Does the G7 Keep Inviting India to its Summits?

India’s recurring invitations reveal as much about New Delhi’s ambitions as about the G7’s adaptation to the changing times.

A group photo from the 2025 G7 summit in Canada, including full members and guests, like India’s Narendra Modi.

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives at the G7 Summit in Évian, France, next week, he will be there, once again, as a guest and not a member. India, having been a “special invitee” for over a dozen summits since the 2003 G8 summit in the same French city, is striking. India is not a U.S. treaty ally, remains active in BRICS, engages closely with Russia and China, has declined to join Western sanctions on Russia, and champions all of this in the name of “strategic autonomy.” 

In the midst of a strained India-U.S. relationship, the anomaly of India-G7 ties will also define next week’s long-awaited Modi-Trump meeting.

But to return to our topic: The reason for these persistent invitations to the G7 lies perhaps in India’s rise, coinciding with a broader transformation in the grouping’s outreach. As the world’s most populous country, a major economic power, and an influential voice across the Global South, India is difficult to exclude from global governance. 

The deeper story is not simply that India matters; it is equally a story about the G7 — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States — broad basing itself by engaging with non-Western powers. The guest list of the 2026 G7 summit — India, Brazil, South Korea, Kenya and perhaps Syria — reminds us of the G8, and its outreach during 2003-2009. Except that China, which was then included, is no longer invited.

For much of its history, the G7 — the group of the world’s seven most advanced industrialized nations — had functioned as the steering committee for the global economic, security and foreign policy issues. At their first summit at Rambouillet in 1975, these nations had roughly 70 percent of global GDP. Today, the G7 generates about 43 percent of world GDP in current dollar terms, but less than 28 percent in terms of purchasing power parity. Likewise, the G7’s share of 15 percent of the world population in 1975 has since shrunk to less than 10 percent. 

The world the G7 once managed is now larger, more diverse, and less deferential. This is what makes the G7 explore board basing itself and see India fitting the bill most aptly, which explains India’s related invitations to the table.

The Search for Legitimacy

No doubt, the G7 remains extraordinarily powerful, dominates advanced technology sectors, global finance, innovation, and military capabilities. But this is no longer sufficient to manage global governance. India has the world’s largest population, estimated at more than 1.46 billion people. Its growth rate of 7.7 percent makes India the fastest-growing among major economies, with an ever-growing appetite for robust private consumption and capital investments. India is also increasingly integral to deliberations on climate governance, artificial intelligence, digital regulation, energy transitions, food security, and development finance.

Second, India holds promise to offer something many Western governments desire but often lack: access to the Global South. The developing world is no longer a passive post-colonial audience but an active political constituency. India’s credentials following its 2023 presidency of the G20 — with the inclusion of the African Union as its 21st member and its Voice of Global South summits —  promise to connect the G7 to the Global South. Unlike rising China, India has never been a cause for G7 anxieties about economic coercion or geopolitical revisionism. Yet, unlike most other developing nations, India carries the requisite economic and diplomatic weight to shape global governance deliberations. For the G7, engagement with India broadens its conversations across the developing countries.

Third, India has become central to the emerging geopolitical architecture of the Indo-Pacific. For most North American observers, the dominant strategic narrative in Indo-Pacific buzz remains U.S.-China sabre-rattling. But Asia’s future is not being shaped by........

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