Overview
This weekend, India will host international leaders for the 18th annual BRICS Summit in New Delhi. India, which assumed the chairmanship in January, faces the difficult responsibility of keeping the summit neutral and unified as members seek diverse objectives: Russia will look to assert its status as a global power player despite Western isolation, India and China will attempt to further their diplomatic and economic thaw, and New Delhi will continue seeking to connect members' digital currencies (as opposed to introducing a common BRICS currency) and boost global rupee usage. Meanwhile, bloc unity is increasingly tested by upcoming Brazilian elections, the Iran war, global economic pressures, and diverging relationships with partners like the US and Israel. Read our analysts’ takes below.
Zayna Dembinski, Asia-Pacific Analyst: President Xi Jinping is confirmed to attend the BRICS Summit, reinforcing signals that China and India are seeking to rebuild ties
China’s Foreign Ministry ended months of speculation yesterday by confirming President Xi Jinping will attend the BRICS Summit in New Delhi this weekend, marking his first visit to India in nearly seven years. Xi’s attendance is the clearest signal yet that the cautious China-India thaw is gaining momentum following the 2020 Galwan Valley clash, which severely strained bilateral ties. Since 2024, Beijing and New Delhi have gradually restored high-level engagement, resumed direct flights and border trade, and continued negotiations over their disputed border.
The thaw is also beginning to extend into economic ties, although New Delhi remains cautious about deepening dependence on China. India loosened regulations in May to ease FDI by investors from countries sharing a land border, including China; proposals worth more than $500 million have since been reported. Yet, the scale of bilateral trade highlights the structural imbalance that continues to complicate the relationship: China was India’s largest trading partner in FY2025-26, and India ran a record deficit. Such imbalances reinforce Modi’s “Make in India” and self-reliance agenda, which seeks to build domestic capacity in sectors where India remains dependent on external sources.
The expected Modi-Xi sideline meeting on Saturday will nevertheless test whether the thaw can produce concrete progress on issues that continue to constrain bilateral ties, like ongoing border disputes. Both sides have economic incentives to stabilize ties despite continued distrust. Beyond Xi’s presence underscoring the importance Beijing attaches to BRICS and maintaining cohesion within the expanded bloc, it also gives Xi an opportunity to reinforce ties with India and other Global South partners before his expected meeting with US President Trump later this month in Washington.
Ian Cameron, Europe analyst: The summit is an opportunity for Moscow to show that Russia remains a global player
The BRICS summit is happening against the background of a difficult year for Russia, and Putin’s presence in New Delhi will allow the Kremlin to depict Russia as a major global player. Progress on the battlefield against Ukraine has stalled, Kyiv has spent months carrying out a campaign of strikes against Russia’s economy reaching deep inside the country, and Russia is facing a growing budget deficit and myriad economic troubles. Tensions with Europe have also grown due to Russia’s campaign of sabotage efforts on European countries. Russia's presence in New Delhi allows it to reassert Moscow as an important global force that, while isolated from the West, remains respected and well-connected across the world.
Notably, President of Russia Vladimir Putin’s presence this weekend will constitute the first time he has left Russia to attend a BRICS summit in person since 2019 (the 2024 summit was in Russia). In 2023 and 2025, the summits took place in countries that are members of the International Criminal Court, which has issued a warrant for Putin. During the summit Putin will have bilateral meetings with figures including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the President of South Africa, the President of Egypt, the Prime Minister of Thailand, and others. The summit will also feature initiatives to potentially create alternative payments methods between BRICS countries, and Moscow supports global efforts to decentralize Western dominance in global finance.
Moscow could also use the summit to push forward potential business deals. Russia is bringing a delegation that includes representatives from multiple ministries, Rostec (a state-owned defense conglomerate), Rosatom (Russia’s state nuclear company), and other businesses and banks. Russia has recently shown its SU-57 fighter and other defense technologies at the El Alamein International Airshow in Egypt as part of a potential exports push. Rosatom has also undertaken new international agreements in recent years, something I wrote about earlier this year.
Carter Spahn, Geoeconomics analyst: India seeks wider rupee usage, but risks US retaliation and will struggle to address the underlying trade imbalance
Linking central bank digital currencies, as India has proposed, would result in easier payments. But it would not guarantee greater acceptance of rupees, which New Delhi seeks in order to reduce transaction and foreign-exchange costs, limit exposure to dollar funding and exchange-rate swings and give India greater financial autonomy. India’s merchandise trade deficit with BRICS partners reached $226.1 billion in fiscal 2025–26. Rupee settlement is growing: across all trading partners, the currency accounted for 2.66% of India’s reported goods-import settlements in fiscal 2025–26, rising to 8.14% in April–June 2026. But settling more imports in rupees would leave recipients needing opportunities to spend, invest or exchange them. Currency swaps could support settlement, but neither swaps nor faster payments would eliminate the underlying trade imbalance.
Indian efforts to increase the use of rupees in cross-border payments come alongside a parallel initiative promoting usage in borrowing. The New Development Bank plans to launch a 250-billion-rupee bond program over five years to finance Indian infrastructure in local currency and reduce borrowers’ exchange-rate exposure. That would represent a meaningful expansion of rupee financing at the bank: at the end of 2025, 59.5% of its active portfolio was denominated in US dollars, compared with just 1% in Indian rupees.
Both initiatives could reduce dollar use in particular transactions without creating a rival currency, but could still risk US retaliation. President Trump has previously threatened 100% tariffs over efforts to replace the dollar and, separately, an additional 10% on countries aligning with what he called BRICS’ “anti-American policies.” That creates a potential complication as India seeks preferential US tariff treatment to finalize its bilateral trade agreement. Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal said on September 9 that the deal was largely finalized, but the framework for preferential market access remained under discussion. If Washington interprets payment diversification as a challenge to the dollar, India’s pursuit of cheaper BRICS transactions could complicate its negotiations over access to the US market.
Elton Smole, Americas analyst: With Brazil’s October presidential elections neck and neck, the future path of a founding BRICS member hangs in the balance
The BRICS summit comes just weeks ahead of Brazilian elections that will have major implications for Brasilia’s role in the bloc amid a broader Latin American realignment with the US. After holding a comfortable lead throughout the summer, incumbent Luis Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula, who is not attending the summit) is now polling neck and neck with right-wing challenger Flavio Bolsonaro (son of Jair Bolsonaro).
Lula has pushed back on anti-Western sentiment in BRICS, describing the bloc as “not against anyone,” while embracing it as a geopolitical hedge and platform for greater economic partnership with China. Lula, who was elected to a third term in 2022 after previously serving two consecutive terms from 2003 to 2011, played a foundational role in the bloc’s early years and has continued to embrace Brazil’s membership as a means of mitigating US tariffs. And as Brazil’s economic growth has stagnated, China has largely driven the bloc’s economic growth and has remained Brazil’s top trading partner since 2009.
However, Brazil’s balancing act is becoming increasingly hard to manage. During Jair Bolsonaro’s term in office from 2019 to 2023, Brazil remained engaged in BRICS, despite Bolsonaro’s pro-US alignment. However, Bolsonaro said in an interview last year that he would pull Brazil out of BRICS if he was ever reelected, and Flavio Bolsonaro’s election platform is largely a continuation of his father’s political movement. Brazil’s economic dependence on China is increasingly a pressure point as the Trump administration seeks to counteract Chinese influence in Latin America. If elected, Flavio Bolsonaro would be forced to balance economic pragmatism with immense pressure to move Brazil closer into Washington’s orbit.
Chris Dantes, Africa analyst: South Africa seeks deeper economic ties with BRICS members amid domestic challenges and estrangement from the US
South Africa is likely to use the BRICS summit to pursue greater economic cooperation in key sectors such as mining, infrastructure and technology, and cast its deepening relationship with India as a model for South-South cooperation. The two countries have reportedly made significant progress on digital public infrastructure, logistics, science and technology, and have also discussed deeper cooperation over the next five years in infrastructure, critical minerals and skills development — areas that align with South Africa’s need to address its longstanding infrastructure deficiencies and dependence on raw-material exports. For India, South Africa’s critical minerals are increasingly important for renewable energy and semiconductor supply chains.
South Africa also has an incentive to diversify its export markets. The Ramaphosa government’s efforts to secure a longer extension of the US African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) produced only modest results, with Washington set to extend the program for two years — far short of the 15-year extension Pretoria had reportedly sought. Greater economic ties with India and other BRICS members could therefore help South Africa reduce its reliance on the US market while opening new opportunities for trade and investment.
But South Africa’s economic vulnerabilities could make those ambitions harder to realize. GDP contracted 0.2% in the second quarter, interrupting six consecutive quarters of modest growth, while the rand remains vulnerable to global shocks, particularly movements in the dollar, oil prices and geopolitical tensions. These constraints do not erase South Africa’s advantages as a source of critical minerals and a potential gateway to the wider African market, but they could increase the risks of doing business there.
