18th BRICS Summit Opens in New Delhi With Bilaterals on the Eve of Day One

🗞️ Why in News The 18th BRICS Summit convened at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, on 12 to 13 September 2026 under India’s Chairship, the second leaders’ plenary of the enlarged, eleven-member grouping after Rio de Janeiro in July 2025. On the eve of Day One, on 11 September 2026, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held bilateral meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Negotiators from the eleven member states reached consensus on the text of a New Delhi Declaration, to be adopted at the close of the summit.

Day One in One Table

The Bilaterals on Day Zero

Modi-Putin. The two leaders met at Bharat Mandapam on 11 September 2026, their second in-person meeting in a fortnight after the bilateral on the sidelines of the SCO Summit at Bishkek on 31 August 2026, and afterwards travelled together to the INNOPROM India exhibition. Prime Minister Modi presented President Putin with a Russian translation of the Tirukkural, the classical Tamil ethical treatise attributed to Thiruvalluvar. Agenda items included energy trade, the operational status of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), defence supply-chain continuity, and coordination on multilateral platforms.

Modi-Pezeshkian. In their bilateral, the two leaders discussed regional stability in West Asia in the wake of the earlier strikes involving Iran and the retaliatory episodes that reached the UAE, and the Chabahar port arrangement. India’s line has been that Chabahar is a stabilising element in the corridor, distinct from the wider political dispute, though India Ports Global Limited has scaled back its visible operational presence since 2026, the US sanctions waiver having lapsed on 26 April 2026.

Modi-Guterres. With the UN Secretary-General, the discussion covered the reform of multilateralism, the composition of the UN Security Council, the operationalisation of the Pact for the Future adopted in 2024, and coordination on climate-finance and Loss and Damage. The Secretary-General is participating in the BRICS plenary as a guest.

The Enlarged Room and Its Arithmetic

BRICS today is eleven members. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are the original five. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been members since 2024, with effect from 1 January 2024; Indonesia was inducted from January 2025. Saudi Arabia is listed as a full member by official BRICS material and by India’s own 2026 Chairship, though Riyadh has never publicly confirmed formal accession, so independent reporting describes its status as ambiguous. It is not a BRICS Partner Country, which is a separate ten-country category comprising Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

The grouping accounts for roughly half of the world’s population, about two-fifths of global GDP measured in purchasing-power parity, and around a fourth of global trade, and includes many of the world’s largest energy producers and consumers. It operates by consensus, not by majority vote, so enlargement adds veto points rather than voting weight, and declarations tend toward broader language as the room grows more diverse.

The New Delhi Agenda

India’s Chairship priorities, expressed in the summit theme, cluster around four pillars.

Resilience. Reform of the international financial architecture; wider use of local currencies for trade settlement without a de-dollarisation framing; contingency-reserve utilisation; reinsurance frameworks for the Global South.

Innovation. Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) cooperation, with India’s Aadhaar-UPI-DigiLocker stack as reference architecture; artificial intelligence governance from a developing-economy perspective; a BRICS start-up bridge.

Cooperation. Reform of multilateralism, including UNSC composition and WTO Appellate Body reinstatement; coordinated positions on climate finance; joint counter-terrorism cooperation.

Sustainability. Ecological transition finance, mangrove and coastal-ecosystem commitments, and lifestyle-based mitigation frameworks such as LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment).

Institutional Deliverables to Watch

New Development Bank (NDB). Headquartered in Shanghai, established under the Fortaleza Summit agreement of 2014 and operational from 2015. First President K V Kamath (India, 2015-2020); current President Dilma Rousseff (Brazil). A GIFT City regional office functions as the India-hosted operational node. Co-financing arrangements with existing multilateral development banks are on the deliverable list.

BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA). A USD 100 billion currency-swap-and-support facility established in 2014, complementing rather than substituting the IMF; it has never been drawn.

BRICS Payments Work. The technical agenda covers direct linkage of national fast-payment systems, exemplified by UPI’s linkage with Singapore’s PayNow; the Bank for International Settlements-designed Project Nexus, scheduled to go live in 2027 and notably not a BRICS initiative; and multi-CBDC settlement platforms, of which mBridge is the most advanced, the BIS having handed it to the participating central banks in October 2024.

The Bilateral Track and Its Weight

The plenary declaration is likely to be broad; several of the geopolitically decisive events will occur on the sidelines. President Xi Jinping’s visit is his first to India in seven years, and the Modi-Xi bilateral scheduled for the sidelines is expected to cover the disengagement follow-through along the Line of Actual Control, direct flights, journalist and student visas, and rare-earth and fertiliser trade. Presidents Ramaphosa, el-Sisi, Subianto, Pezeshkian and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed are also holding separate bilaterals with Prime Minister Modi through the summit.

UPSC Relevance

GS Paper 2. International groupings involving India or affecting India’s interests; India’s neighbourhood; reform of the multilateral architecture.

GS Paper 3. International trade and finance; the role of multilateral development banks in development finance.

The Mains framing. India’s presidency year is the leverage window to institutionalise BRICS instruments that survive the summit’s photo-op: DPI cooperation, NDB co-financing, and a payments architecture whose framing remains at cost and settlement efficiency rather than at currency displacement. The plenary’s success is measured less by the presence of anti-Western rhetoric than by the density of concrete institutional commitments.

A question worth preparing. “The 18th BRICS Summit at New Delhi is India’s most difficult multilateral hosting since the 2023 G-20 presidency. Discuss the sources of internal divergence and evaluate India’s diplomatic options as host. (250 words)”

📌 Facts Corner, Knowledgepedia

Prelims, statement-ready facts:

• The 18th BRICS Summit is at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, on 12 to 13 September 2026; India’s Chairship began 1 January 2026.
• The 2026 theme is “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”; the tagline is “Humanity First”.
• Eleven BRICS members in 2026: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Indonesia.
• Saudi Arabia is listed as a member by BRICS and by India’s Chairship but has never publicly confirmed accession. It is not a Partner Country.
• Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, UAE joined as full members since 1 January 2024; Indonesia since January 2025.
• India previously hosted BRICS at New Delhi (2012), Goa (2016) and virtually (2021).
• NDB is headquartered in Shanghai, established under the Fortaleza agreement of 2014, operational 2015; first President K V Kamath, current President Dilma Rousseff.
• The Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) is a USD 100 billion currency-swap facility (2014).
• On the eve of Day One (11 September 2026), Modi met Putin, Pezeshkian and Guterres.
• The Modi-Xi bilateral is Xi’s first in-person meeting in India in seven years.
• Partner-country invitees at New Delhi: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, among others.

Prelims, the traps:

• Saudi Arabia is listed as a full member by official BRICS material and by India’s 2026 Chairship, but has never publicly confirmed formal accession. It is not a BRICS Partner Country.
• The BRICS operates by consensus, not by majority vote; enlargement therefore adds veto points, not voting weight.
• NDB is headquartered in Shanghai, not Beijing.
• Project Nexus is NOT a BRICS initiative; it is a BIS-designed platform being taken live by five central banks (India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand), with Bank Indonesia as special observer, targeted to go live in 2027.
• The first BRIC leaders’ summit was at Yekaterinburg (2009), not at Fortaleza; Fortaleza (2014) is where the NDB and CRA were established.

Mains, arguments and keywords:

• BRICS as reform-of-multilateralism vehicle: SDR issuance, IMF quota reform, UNSC composition, WTO Appellate Body.
• Local-currency settlement, not de-dollarisation: BRICS Pay, cross-border UPI linkages, PvP settlement in wholesale CBDC.
• DPI as India’s soft-power lever inside BRICS: Aadhaar, UPI, MOSIP as reference architecture.
• LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment) as India’s mitigation framework contribution.
• Strategic autonomy: BRICS for financial-architecture reform, QUAD for Indo-Pacific stability, issue-specific plurilateralism.
• Keywords: NDB, CRA, DPI, LiFE, Project Nexus, mBridge, BRICS-Plus, Global South, consensus.

Interview, be ready for:

• “Is BRICS de-dollarisation?” India’s position is that BRICS payment work is a settlement-diversification exercise, not a de-dollarisation project. Lower transaction costs and PvP settlement are engineering objectives with measurable returns.
• “What has expansion cost the grouping?” It has widened agenda reach and slowed decision speed, because consensus is harder in a bigger room. India’s framing choice is to keep declarations dense in specifics and thin in provocations.
• “How does India balance BRICS and QUAD?” As issue-specific plurilateralism: BRICS for financial-architecture reform, QUAD for Indo-Pacific stability. They are not substitutes.

Sources: MEA, PIB, NDB, GKToday

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