Overview
- The 18th BRICS Leaders’ Summit takes place in New Delhi on Sept. 12–13 with Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosting leaders including Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian as well as partner states and outreach invitees.
- India’s year-long chairship has pushed a four‑pillar, delivery-focused agenda — resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability — backed by more than 350 preparatory meetings and proposals such as an MSME invoice‑discounting mechanism, a BRICS incubator network and a digital public‑infrastructure repository.
- Negotiations over the New Delhi Declaration remain uncertain because of sharp divisions over the West Asia crisis, especially between Iran and the UAE, and competing views on financial steps pushed by China and Russia versus India and other members.
- Leaders plan bilateral talks on the sidelines, including a closely watched Modi‑Xi meeting, even as the summit advances sectoral work on energy security, food and health resilience, supply‑chain logistics and payments interoperability that could affect prices and access for consumers.
- BRICS now spans 11 full members and roughly half the world’s population, but experts say institutional limits — an undercapitalised New Development Bank, uneven progress on payment systems and asymmetric trade ties between members — will shape how far the bloc can turn agreements into action.