BRICS: Composition, Benefits, and the 18th Summit in New Delhi

What BRICS is

BRICS began as a Wall Street acronym, not a political project. In 2001, Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill coined "BRIC" to describe four large emerging economies — Brazil, Russia, India, and China — he believed would reshape global growth over the following decades. Governments picked up the label themselves: foreign ministers first met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in 2006, and the first full leaders' summit followed in 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia. South Africa joined in 2010–11, turning BRIC into BRICS.

For over a decade, membership stayed fixed at five. That changed sharply from 2023 onward: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE joined as full members in January 2024, followed by Indonesia in January 2025 as an 11th member, alongside a newly created "partner country" tier for states with looser affiliation.

BRICS is not a treaty alliance, a military bloc, or a customs union. It operates entirely by consensus — every member effectively holds a veto over joint statements — and the chairship rotates annually among members. India holds the chair for 2026 (its fourth time hosting, after 2012, 2016, and 2021); China takes over in 2027.

Current composition (2026)

11 full members: Brazil, Russia, India, and China (the founding four), South Africa (2011), Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE (all 2024), and Indonesia (2025), with Saudi Arabia generally listed as the 11th member by India and official BRICS materials — though independent reporting, including Reuters, notes Riyadh has not fully completed its formal accession and has at times participated more as an invited guest than a full member. The Saudi foreign minister is attending this summit.

10 partner countries: Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. Partners join selected meetings and the open summit session but don't hold full decision-making rights.

Combined, the grouping now spans Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, and is commonly cited (per India's 2026 chairship materials) as covering roughly half the world's population, around 40% of global GDP in PPP terms, and about a quarter of global trade — with combined nominal GDP across the 11 members often put above $32 trillion.

Why countries actually join

Stripped of the diplomatic language, the recurring draws are fairly concrete:

A bigger seat at the table. BRICS is the main vehicle through which large developing economies collectively push for reform of the UN Security Council, the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO — institutions whose voting structures were largely set when today's emerging economies had far less economic weight than they do now.

Development financing without traditional IMF strings attached. The New Development Bank (NDB), headquartered in Shanghai and running since 2014–15, has approved on the order of $43 billion across more than 100 infrastructure, energy, water, and social-sector projects in its first decade — without the structural-adjustment conditions historically attached to IMF lending. Members are pushing it toward more local-currency lending, though the dollar and yuan still dominate its book.

A financial safety net. The Contingent Reserve Arrangement is a $100 billion pool members can draw on during short-term balance-of-payments stress — a supplement to the IMF, not a replacement for it.

Trade settlement outside the dollar system. This is the practical core of the "de-dollarisation" conversation, and it's more modest than the phrase suggests. There is explicitly no BRICS common currency — the 2026 declaration says so directly. What's actually being built is more mundane: greater invoicing and settlement in members' own currencies, interoperable national payment systems, and technical work through a dedicated BRICS Payment Task Force. For sanctioned members like Russia and Iran, this has real sanctions-resilience value; for a country like India, it's mainly about cutting transaction costs and currency risk on specific trade corridors.

Complementary economies. An 11-member bloc happens to combine major energy exporters with major energy importers, and large food producers with food-deficit markets — which is why cooperation agendas increasingly cover supply chains, critical minerals, and agriculture alongside the more headline-grabbing financial topics.

A hedge, not a divorce. Membership lets governments stay engaged with Western-led institutions while simultaneously building an alternative table — which is precisely why the bloc includes countries that still trade heavily with the US and EU alongside more adversarial members.

Worth stating plainly: BRICS has no binding treaty force, no common market, and no common foreign policy, and it papers over real internal tensions — the India–China border and trade relationship, Iran and the UAE's differences over West Asia, and very different appetites among members for confronting the West directly. Consensus text tends to criticize policies (tariffs, sanctions) rather than name countries directly, precisely so an internally divided membership can still sign the same document.

The summit happening right now

The 18th BRICS Summit is being held at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on September 12–13, 2026, under the theme "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability" — India's fourth time chairing the grouping. Confirmed attendees include Prime Minister Modi, President Xi Jinping (his first visit to India in roughly seven years), President Putin, Iran's President Pezeshkian, Indonesia's President Prabowo, South Africa's President Ramaphosa, Egypt's President el-Sisi, and Ethiopia's PM Abiy, with Brazil and the UAE represented at senior levels.

On the first day, leaders unanimously adopted the New Delhi Declaration — a roughly 140-point document reached after overnight negotiation, including a last-mile compromise between Iran and the UAE over how to word the West Asia section. Modi told the room directly that no member had raised an objection. The declaration's substantive threads: renewed backing for India and Brazil to gain permanent UN Security Council roles; concern over unilateral tariffs, secondary sanctions, and carbon-related trade measures seen as inconsistent with WTO rules; continued local-currency payment work with an explicit rejection of a common currency; condemnation of the April 2025 Pahalgam terror attack; language on Gaza calling for humanitarian access and a two-state outcome, carefully worded enough that Iran and the UAE could both sign it; and commitments on AI governance and cross-border cybercrime.

Day two is the open outreach session with partner countries, alongside a run of Modi's own bilateral meetings, with the focus shifting from the political declaration toward technology, economic resilience, and sustainable growth.

For India specifically, the diplomatic achievement isn't really the content of the declaration — it's that a grouping now including both Iran and the UAE, and both India and China, could still agree on one document at all. Whether the cooperation agenda built during India's chair year outlasts the handover to China in 2027 will be the real test of whether BRICS is becoming a standing institution, or remains a once-a-year summit brand that resets with each new chair.