India’s 2026 BRICS Summit Delivers the BRICS+ Outreach Momentum
The BRICS summit in India in 2026 succeeded in providing the key deliverables related to the cohesion of the bloc and the objectives set by India’s presidency with respect to boosting BRICS economic cooperation at the micro-level of companies and key sectors. In this respect, most of the observers rightly pointed to the unanimous adoption of the Summit Declaration as well as the thaw in India-China relations as the most important results of the BRICS summit contributing to BRICS unity. But what was no less significant was also India’s role in further advancing the BRICS+ format, with the BRICS+ summit meetings featuring representatives of key regional integration arrangements, development institutions and global organizations. With BRICS+ summits now being held consecutively each year after the 2022 re-launch by China, the BRICS+ format is becoming a systemic and critical part of the group’s outreach to the global community.
After the bloc’s expansion and the creation of the BRICS partnership belt, the circle of emerging economies participating in the BRICS summits widened significantly. In 2026 all representatives of the partnership belt and the BRICS core attended the BRICS/BRICS+ summit, with Saudi Arabia also attending the meetings, being represented by Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
In terms of the regional integration arrangements invited to the BRICS+ meetings, the BRICS summit featured yet gain ASEAN – this time the regional bloc’s presidency was represented by Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., President of Republic of the Philippines. An invitation has also been extended to Uruguay as the chair in Latin America’s CELAC integration bloc, with Mario Lubetkin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay attending the BRICS+ summit. The African Union was represented by Evariste Ndayishimiye, President of Republic of Burundi, while the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was represented by Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, Minister of Foreign Affairs the Kingdom of Bahrain.
The 2025 BRICS summit in Brazil broke new ground with global organizations such as the WTO being invited to attend the BRICS+ summit. In 2026 India continued with this important trend by inviting Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of WTO as well as Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO). Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of United Nations, also attended the BRICS+ meetings delivering his address to the attendees and holding meetings with the leaders of BRICS member economies, including with the leaders of India and Egypt.
Finally, with respect to the BRICS+ format Brazil’s BRICS Presidency also expanded the scope of participants to include representatives of development institutions and in 2026 India replicated this approach by inviting Dilma Rousseff, President of the New Development Bank (NDB) and Zou Jiayi, President of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). In effect, the participation of AIIB as well as the WHO and the WTO may be seen as an expansion of the BRICS+ format to what we referred to as the BRICS++ format that transcends the limits of the Global South and includes global organizations as well as the regional development institutions with participation from advanced economies.
With China taking over the BRICS presidency in 2027, it would appear to be challenging to further expand the scope of the BRICS+/BRICS++ format beyond the already quite inclusive composition of participants exhibited in the 2025-2026 summits. One possible further extension could involve mega-regional blocs of the global economy such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in which China is playing a key role together with ASEAN countries.
But in the end the numerical expansion of regional and global organizations attending the BRICS+ summits at some point will need to be transformed into a qualitative approach of building cooperative platforms across the regional integration arrangements of the Global South with portfolios of potential connectivity and trade liberalization projects being formed across the BRICS+ circle. Perhaps going forward some of the BRICS+ summits may also feature the launching of dialogues between regional integration blocs along the lines of how China hosted the RCEP-CPTPP dialogue on the margins of the 32nd APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade Meeting in May 2026[3]. Such a pragmatic and practical approach would position the BRICS+ platform as one of the engines of open dialogue and trade liberalization in a global economy whose vitality and growth momentum has been greatly undermined by populism, geopolitical fragmentation and waves of protectionism.
Yaroslav Lissovolik is Founder of BRICS+ Analytics.