BRICS is an intergovernmental grouping of major emerging economies that cooperate on trade, development, finance and reform of global governance. The name originally stood for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but the bloc expanded from January 2024, and India holds the BRICS chair in 2026, hosting the 18th Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi. BRICS is not a formal treaty organisation or a military alliance; it is a coalition that seeks a larger voice for the developing world in a system long shaped by Western-led institutions.
What BRICS stands for and how it began
The acronym began as an economic label. Brazil, Russia, India and China formed the first summit grouping, holding their inaugural leaders’ meeting in 2009, and South Africa joined in 2010, giving the bloc its familiar five-nation form and the letter S. The founding rationale was that these large, fast-growing economies deserved greater influence in global decision-making and could benefit from cooperating on shared interests.
Unlike the European Union or NATO, BRICS has no founding treaty, no permanent headquarters and no binding rules. It works by consensus through annual summits and ministerial meetings, which makes it flexible but also limits how quickly it can act. The term BRIC was originally coined by an economist to describe fast-growing markets, and the countries themselves later adopted it as the basis for real political cooperation, an unusual case of a market label turning into a diplomatic grouping.
Because it is a coalition rather than a formal institution, BRICS has no equivalent of a parliament, a court or a secretariat issuing binding directives. Its influence flows instead from the combined weight of its members and the political signal that they are choosing to coordinate. This informality is deliberate: members prize their sovereignty and independent foreign policies, and BRICS is designed to accommodate that rather than override it.
Who are the members now?
BRICS underwent its first major enlargement from January 2024, admitting several new members, and Indonesia formally joined in January 2025. According to India’s official 2026 chairship, the grouping now comprises eleven member countries. The bloc has also created a category of partner countries that participate in cooperation without full membership.
| Group | Countries |
|---|---|
| Founding five | Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa |
| Joined from 2024 | Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, United Arab Emirates |
| Joined 2025 | Indonesia |
| Also listed by India’s 2026 chairship | Saudi Arabia |
A separate list of partner countries, adopted in 2025, includes states such as Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. Membership details continue to evolve, so official summit communiqués remain the most reliable reference. The partner-country tier is itself a notable innovation: it lets interested states engage with BRICS and take part in cooperation without the full commitments of membership, giving the bloc a way to grow its influence gradually.
The enlargement is significant beyond the raw numbers. Bringing in major energy producers and populous economies broadens the bloc’s economic base and geographic spread across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. It also signals that a growing number of countries see value in a forum outside the traditional Western-led order, whatever their differences on other issues.
What BRICS aims to do
BRICS pursues a broad agenda rather than a single mission. Its recurring priorities include:
- Economic cooperation on trade, investment and development.
- Reform of global governance, including a bigger say for developing nations in bodies like the IMF and the UN Security Council.
- Development finance through the New Development Bank, headquartered in Shanghai.
- Financial resilience, including discussion of trade in national currencies to reduce dependence on any single currency.
- Cooperation on health, energy, technology and climate.
India’s 2026 chairship theme, framed around resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability, reflects this wide-ranging approach. In recent years the agenda has broadened to include digital public infrastructure, food and energy security, climate finance and health cooperation, areas where developing economies often feel that global rules were written without their input.
A recurring theme in BRICS discussions is the desire to reduce dependence on any single national currency for trade and reserves. Members have explored settling more trade in their own currencies and strengthening alternative payment arrangements. It is important to be precise here: talk of a shared BRICS currency remains largely aspirational and faces formidable practical obstacles, and most concrete progress has been in incremental steps toward local-currency trade rather than any single new currency.
How BRICS differs from the G7 and G20
BRICS is sometimes described as a counterweight to Western-led groupings, but it overlaps with them in complex ways. Several BRICS members also belong to the G20. The table below highlights the key contrasts, and readers can go deeper in our explainer on the difference between the G7 and G20.
| Feature | BRICS | G7 |
|---|---|---|
| Composition | Major emerging economies | Advanced industrial economies |
| Founding basis | No treaty, consensus-led | No treaty, consensus-led |
| Focus | Reform of global order, development | Coordination among established powers |
| Own bank | New Development Bank | None specific to the group |
Why BRICS matters
The bloc’s significance comes from scale. Together, its members account for a very large share of the world’s population and a substantial and growing portion of global economic output measured by purchasing power. That weight gives BRICS diplomatic leverage and makes its positions on trade, finance and development hard to ignore. It also means the group speaks for a large part of humanity that has often felt marginalised in institutions designed in the mid-twentieth century, when today’s emerging economies were far smaller players. For India, BRICS is one of several platforms, alongside the G20 and others, through which it pursues strategic autonomy and a stronger voice for the Global South.
The New Development Bank is one of the bloc’s most concrete achievements, financing infrastructure and sustainable-development projects among members and beyond, and offering an alternative to traditional Western-dominated lenders. Members have also established a Contingent Reserve Arrangement, a currency-support mechanism intended to help members facing short-term balance-of-payments pressures, showing that BRICS cooperation extends into practical financial architecture, not just declarations.
What BRICS means for India
For India, BRICS is a platform to advance long-standing goals: a more representative international order, development finance on fairer terms, and a stronger collective voice for the Global South. India has consistently used the grouping to press for reform of institutions where developing countries feel under-represented, while carefully balancing its BRICS role against its partnerships with Western democracies. This balancing act reflects India’s broader strategy of strategic autonomy, cooperating across blocs rather than aligning exclusively with any one.
India also brings caution to some BRICS debates. It has been wary of any framing that positions the bloc as anti-Western, preferring to present it as pro-reform and pro-development. That nuance matters, because India engages simultaneously with groupings on different sides of global fault lines, and values BRICS as one instrument among many rather than a rigid alliance.
Criticism and challenges
BRICS faces genuine internal tensions. Its members differ widely in political systems, economic size and strategic interests, and some, such as India and China, have significant rivalries. This diversity can make consensus slow and dilute the group’s positions. Critics argue that BRICS is stronger on rhetoric than delivery, and that talk of reducing reliance on the US dollar has so far outpaced practical steps.
Expansion adds both weight and complexity: a larger, more varied membership increases global representation but makes agreement harder. Coordinating the interests of oil exporters and importers, democracies and authoritarian states, and rivals as well as partners is a formidable task, and consensus can produce cautious, lowest-common-denominator outcomes. How effectively BRICS turns its combined size into coordinated action remains an open question, and one closely watched at each summit.
There is also debate about what BRICS is for. Some members see it primarily as an economic and development platform, while others emphasise its role as a political counterweight to Western dominance. These differing visions coexist for now, but they shape everything from the pace of enlargement to how boldly the group challenges existing institutions. Reading BRICS accurately means holding both its real achievements and its genuine limitations in view at once.
BRICS in 2026 under India
India assumed the BRICS chair on 1 January 2026 and is hosting the 18th Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi. As chair, India sets the agenda and priorities for the year, an opportunity to push themes important to developing economies, including institutional reform, sustainable development and technology cooperation. Chairship rotates among members, and each host stamps its own emphasis on the year’s work, from the choice of ministerial meetings to the initiatives it champions. The summit is a focal point for tracking how the enlarged bloc functions in practice, and for gauging whether its broader membership can still reach meaningful common positions.
For readers following India’s global engagements and the shifting balance of international institutions, BRICS is a key story to watch. Explore more world-affairs explainers, including on the World Health Organization and global economic measures like how GDP is measured, in our world section and across newsreverse com.