Guterres will attend India's BRICS summit at Bharat Mandapam on 12 and 13 September

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres will be in New Delhi for the 18th BRICS summit on 12 and 13 September. His spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, told a briefing on Tuesday that the secretary-general would take part, while adding that the UN had yet to issue the official announcement. The summit sits at Bharat Mandapam. India holds the BRICS chair for the fourth time and took it up on 1 January 2026. The group marks 20 years this year.

Asked about possible meetings with Narendra Modi, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, Dujarric used the same holding line: the participation itself had not been formally posted. Indian and other coverage still lists Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian among leaders expected in Delhi. Xi is widely expected to attend before travelling to the United States later in September for a meeting with Donald Trump.

Guterres was in India in February for the India-AI Impact Summit. His current term ends in December 2026. A BRICS appearance in the chair country, with Russia, Iran and possibly China in the room, is one of the last large South-South gatherings on his calendar.

What he said in Bishkek the day before

On 1 September Guterres spoke at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Kyrgyzstan. He called UN-SCO work a pillar of multilateralism and listed four files that, in his view, still run on 1945 hardware: global security, development finance, climate and the governance of artificial intelligence. He said multilateral bodies, including the UN and the Bretton Woods institutions, must raise the weight of developing countries.

That speech is the script he is likely to reuse in Delhi. BRICS has spent two years talking about alternative payment rails, a larger New Development Bank and a seat at tables designed in the 1940s. Guterres cannot deliver those seats. He can tell the room that the UN chief agrees the furniture is outdated. For a secretary-general in his last months, that is the usable currency.

The guest list is the story

Putin in New Delhi, ten days after Russian strikes on Kyiv killed 12 people including an Indian citizen, will force the hosts to separate the BRICS photograph from the bilateral file. Pezeshkian's presence during an active US-Iran shooting war around Hormuz does the same. If Xi comes, the week becomes a three-leader corridor between Bishkek, Cairo, Delhi and a later Trump meeting.

India's chair theme has been framed around resilience, cooperation and sustainability. The test of 12-13 September is whether the communiqué names payment systems, oil shipping and UN reform in operational language, or only in the adjectives already in the invitation. Guterres's chair at the table will not decide that. It will make it harder for the hosts to treat the summit as a closed club with no line to the UN.