Modi and Xi to meet in New Delhi on 12 September, Xi's first India visit in seven years

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in New Delhi on 12 September, diplomatic sources told The Tribune. It will be the first face-to-face meeting between the two men on Indian soil since the 2020 clash in Galwan. Xi's trip is his first to India in seven years. His last informal session with Modi on this side of the border was at Mamallapuram in 2019.

Xi arrives for the 18th BRICS Leaders' Summit, which India is hosting on 12 and 13 September at Bharat Mandapam in Pragati Maidan. China takes the chair after the meeting. Officials expect the bilateral to cover the Line of Actual Control, trade and investment, including market access and high-technology imports. The two governments have spent two years easing the border file without declaring it closed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is due in the capital on Friday, 11 September. He will attend the BRICS Business Forum with Modi and hold a separate bilateral. One item on that agenda is an upgrade of cooperation on the BrahMos cruise missile, which the two countries build together. Leaders begin arriving from Friday. The Business Forum will run panels on supply chains and non-tariff barriers among member states.

The enlarged core group now has 11 full members: Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. Indonesia joined in 2025. Ten partner countries sit in the wider frame: Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. Confirmed or expected leaders include Cyril Ramaphosa, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Prabowo Subianto, Masoud Pezeshkian, Abiy Ahmed, Alexander Lukashenko, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Anwar Ibrahim and Anutin Charnvirakul. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is expected.

India's public line for the summit is that BRICS should work as a development forum, not as a bloc against other groups. Getting Iran and the UAE onto the same joint statement is already listed by Indian officials as a drafting problem. The war in the Gulf, tanker strikes and a closed or throttled Hormuz sit in the same week as an 11-member meeting that includes both Tehran and Abu Dhabi. That is a communique test, not a photo test.

The Modi-Xi hour will be read against Galwan, against the slow pullback of forward deployments, and against a trade ledger that still runs heavily in China's favour. Indian officials have been cataloguing complaints on market access and on restricted Chinese investment. Xi will want language that treats the relationship as stabilised. Modi will want something he can show on the border and on the deficit. Those two wants do not automatically fit in one paragraph.

Putin's Friday meeting is the other pillar. India has kept discounted Russian oil flowing through the war. BrahMos production is a rare co-made weapon with an export line. An upgrade talk in New Delhi, two days before Xi lands, is a reminder that Moscow remains a defence supplier even as New Delhi hosts a club that China will chair.

Bharat Mandapam was built for the 2023 G20. It now holds an 11-flag summit in a week when oil is above $100 and when two of the flags in the hall are on opposite sides of a shooting war. The bilateral that matters for the host is still the one on 12 September with Xi. The last time the two men met in India, Galwan had not happened. This time it is the first sentence of every briefing.