India sets 12–13 September for the 18th BRICS summit at Bharat Mandapam
MEA confirmed the dates on Thursday. India has already run more than 350 BRICS meetings in over 25 cities this year. The grouping marks 20 years since its founding. Reuters reported Xi Jinping may bring about 400 officials if he comes.
New Delhi2 min read
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The Ministry of External Affairs said on Thursday that India will host the 18th BRICS Summit at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on 12 and 13 September. Leaders of member and partner countries, plus outreach invitees, are expected. The official theme is “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability.”
India took the rotating chair on 1 January 2026, its fourth turn after 2012, 2016 and 2021. The year is also the grouping’s twentieth since the first BRIC meeting. MEA said more than 350 meetings and high-level sessions have already been held in over 25 Indian cities, covering the three standing pillars: political and security, economic and financial, and cultural and people-to-people work.
The current members, after successive enlargements, are Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. Partner countries and outreach guests sit in a wider circle. China takes the chair at the end of 2026.
Who may walk into the hall
Reuters reported this week that Xi Jinping is likely to attend with a delegation of around 400 officials. That would be his first visit to India in seven years. The figure has not been confirmed by either foreign ministry. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited. A Modi-Putin meeting is separately scheduled on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek at the end of this month, which would come first.
The calendar matters. Ajit Doval and Wang Yi issued an eight-point boundary text in Beijing on 26 August. A possible Xi stop in New Delhi two weeks later would sit on top of that document, not replace it. Hotel and security planning for BRICS is already public for another reason: FSSAI this week cited pests and expired sweets at two Aerocity hotels booked for the summit.
What the chair has actually done
The useful number in Thursday’s statement is 350 meetings, not the slogan. Those sessions produced, among other texts, the Guwahati Declaration on illicit drug trafficking. Working groups have been sitting on finance, health, disaster response and digital public infrastructure. The summit itself will be judged on whether leaders sign anything that changes trade settlement, development-bank lending or a common position on shipping through Hormuz, where oil and product flows are already tight.
BRICS has spent two years talking about alternatives to dollar invoicing. It has not published a working cross-border payment standard that banks can plug into. India’s chair year is the point at which that talk either becomes a pilot or stays a communiqué paragraph. The same test applies to the New Development Bank’s project list and to any language on expanded membership.
Bharat Mandapam was built for the 2023 G20. Using it again for BRICS is a logistical choice as much as a symbolic one. The dates leave India 16 days to lock delegations, motorcades and the bilateral meetings that usually decide whether a summit is remembered for a joint statement or for the corridor talks around it.
