BRICS Expansion and India's Role in a Multipolar World Order

Core Concept

BRICS began in 2009 as an informal grouping of Brazil, Russia, India and China (the "BRIC" acronym was coined by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill in 2001 to describe fast-growing emerging economies); South Africa joined in 2010, making it BRICS. The grouping's core purpose is to give large non-Western economies a collective voice on global governance reform — IMF/World Bank quota reform, UNSC expansion, and an alternative financial architecture — without displacing existing institutions. Its two flagship institutions are the New Development Bank (NDB), headquartered in Shanghai (established 2015, lends for infrastructure and sustainable development in member and non-member developing countries), and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), a currency-swap safety net that members can draw on during balance-of-payments stress.

Key Points

• At the 2023 Johannesburg Summit, BRICS approved its first expansion since 2010; Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE became full members from January 2024, taking membership to nine (Saudi Arabia was also invited but has not formally confirmed accession, so most official counts still describe its status as pending).

• Indonesia became the newest full member in 2025 — the first Southeast Asian country admitted — bringing confirmed full membership to ten.

• At the 2024 Kazan Summit (Russia), BRICS created a new, lighter-touch "Partner Country" category for states that engage with BRICS without full membership; by 2026 this list includes Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

• India hosted the 18th BRICS Summit on 12–13 September 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, under the theme "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability" — its first time chairing the grouping in its expanded ("BRICS+") form.

• The summit adopted the New Delhi Declaration, which pushed for UNSC and multilateral-governance reform, condemned the 2025 Pahalgam terror attack with a "zero tolerance" line on terrorism, opposed unilateral tariffs not sanctioned by the UN Security Council, and backed the BRICS Payment Task Force's work on local-currency settlement and payment interoperability — explicitly without creating a common BRICS currency.

Memory Trick

Peg the summit theme to the grouping's own name: BRICS 2026 = "B" (Brazil, the founding anchor) + RICS (Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation, Sustainability — the four theme words, in order). For the 2024 entrants, remember "EEIU" ("Egypt and Ethiopia Invite UAE" — with Iran as the fourth) — then add "+ Indonesia in 2025" as the fifth, late addition that made it a clean ten.

Current Relevance (2024-2026)

Between the 2023 Johannesburg decision to expand and the 2026 New Delhi Summit, BRICS has moved from a four/five-country bloc to a ten-member-plus-ten-partner architecture — the single biggest structural change in the grouping's history. India's 2026 chairship was consequential because it had to balance two roles at once: host of a Global-South-facing, China-Russia-inclusive grouping, and a Quad member aligned with the US-led Indo-Pacific order. The New Delhi Declaration's careful line on tariffs, its terrorism-related language naming the Pahalgam attack, and its decision to advance de-dollarization-adjacent payment interoperability (while stopping short of a common currency) are all live examples of India using its chairship to shape outcomes rather than just rotate through a calendar slot. China assumes the chair for 2027 and will host the 19th summit.