BRICS Summit 2026: New Delhi Declaration Explained

The 18th BRICS Summit, held in New Delhi on September 12–13, 2026, concluded with the unanimous adoption of the 140-point New Delhi Declaration — the longest BRICS leaders' declaration in a decade. Eleven member nations agreed on frameworks spanning payment infrastructure, local-currency trade, AI governance, climate finance, and UNSC reform.

What Happened at the BRICS Summit 2026?

India hosted the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12–13, 2026, marking one of the most consequential gatherings of the bloc since its expansion in 2023. Leaders from eleven member nations — including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — convened to advance the bloc's agenda on trade, finance, technology, and global governance.

The summit concluded with the unanimous adoption of the New Delhi Declaration, a 140-point, 45-page document that set a record as the longest BRICS leaders' declaration in over a decade. The declaration's length reflects both the expanding membership and the growing ambition of the bloc.

BRICS — originally formed as BRIC by Brazil, Russia, India, and China in 2006, with South Africa joining in 2010 — admitted six new full members in 2024 (Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE), bringing the total to eleven. The New Delhi summit was the second full gathering under the expanded format.

What Were the Key Outcomes of the New Delhi Declaration?

1. Payment Infrastructure: The Most Concrete Deliverable

The single most operationally significant outcome of the summit was the strengthened mandate given to the BRICS Payment Task Force — a collaborative body of central bank experts from across the bloc.

The Task Force, which had been working on frameworks for cross-border settlement that bypass dominant Western financial infrastructure, received a formal directive to accelerate its work on interoperability between member nations' payment systems. The goal: enable transactions in local currencies without routing through the US dollar-denominated SWIFT system.

The declaration did not announce a BRICS common currency — a proposal that had circulated for years but consistently stalled on fundamental disagreements between India and China over architecture and governance. What it did advance was a more pragmatic alternative: bilateral and multilateral local-currency settlement frameworks that reduce dollar dependency without requiring a single supranational currency.

For context: BRICS nations collectively account for approximately 40% of global GDP [UNVERIFIED — exact 2026 figure pending IMF data] and a significant share of global trade. Even partial de-dollarisation of intra-bloc trade would carry measurable consequences for the dollar's reserve currency status.

2. Trade: Pushing Back Against Carbon Border Measures

The New Delhi Declaration took a pointed position on the European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) — the EU's policy of imposing levies on imports from countries with less stringent carbon pricing.

BRICS nations characterised CBAM as a form of trade protectionism disguised as climate policy, arguing that it disadvantages developing economies that have contributed least to historical emissions but now face export penalties. The declaration called for multilateral trade frameworks that do not impose unilateral carbon border measures.

This reflects a consistent tension between the Global North's climate transition architecture and the Global South's development priorities — a fault line that runs through every major international climate negotiation. The BRICS position aligns with longstanding arguments from India, Brazil, and several African members that carbon pricing mechanisms must account for Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR), the principle enshrined in the Paris Agreement.

3. Artificial Intelligence: A Framework for Governance

For the first time in BRICS summit history, artificial intelligence governance received dedicated treatment in the leaders' declaration. The New Delhi Declaration called for:

• Development of AI governance frameworks that reflect the interests of Global South nations

• Resistance to AI regulatory architectures designed exclusively by and for advanced economies

• Cooperation on AI infrastructure — including compute access, data localisation, and model development — to prevent technological dependence

The significance of this inclusion extends beyond the immediate policy commitments. It signals that BRICS intends to be a forum not just for financial and trade coordination but for norm-setting in emerging technology — a domain currently dominated by US and EU regulatory frameworks (the EU AI Act being the most prominent example).

Whether BRICS can translate this declaration language into concrete, coordinated AI governance standards remains an open question. The bloc's internal diversity — ranging from China's state-directed AI development to India's more market-oriented approach — presents real coordination challenges.

4. Climate Finance and Critical Minerals

The declaration addressed two interlinked dimensions of the global energy transition: climate finance and critical minerals.

On climate finance, BRICS nations reiterated demands for the Global North to fulfil commitments to developing economies — including the long-promised $100 billion per year climate finance pledge (which was not met by its original 2020 deadline) and the newer $300 billion annual target agreed at COP29 in Baku (2024). The declaration framed current climate finance flows as inadequate relative to the scale of adaptation and mitigation needed across Global South economies.

On critical minerals — lithium, cobalt, rare earths, and other materials essential for battery storage, electric vehicles, and clean energy infrastructure — the declaration called for equitable value chains that allow producing nations (many of which are BRICS members or partners, including the DRC, Zimbabwe, and Chile) to capture more of the economic value from their resources, rather than exporting raw materials and importing finished products.

This connects directly to a broader BRICS strategic theme: economic sovereignty — the capacity of member nations to add value domestically rather than remaining locked in commodity export roles.

5. UNSC Reform: Strong Language, Limited Progress

The New Delhi Declaration included strong language in support of United Nations Security Council reform — specifically, the expansion of the Security Council to include greater permanent representation for the Global South.

India has been a vocal advocate for a permanent UNSC seat and used its BRICS presidency to advance this cause. The declaration's endorsement of reform reflects the bloc's collective view that the current UNSC architecture — frozen since 1945 — does not reflect contemporary global power realities.

However, the declaration's language stops short of specifying which nations should receive permanent membership, how the veto should be structured, or what timeline is envisaged. The absence of specifics reflects the same obstacle that has blocked UNSC reform for decades: the five current permanent members (including China, itself a BRICS nation) have little institutional incentive to dilute their veto power.

What Was Missing from the New Delhi Declaration?

The Indian Express analysis of the declaration highlights several notable absences:

No common currency timeline. Despite years of discussion, the declaration contains no roadmap for a BRICS currency or a common reserve asset. The payment infrastructure mandate is a pragmatic workaround, not a structural alternative.

No unified position on Russia-Ukraine. With Russia's Vladimir Putin present at the summit — his first in-person appearance at a major multilateral forum in years — the declaration navigated the conflict through studied diplomatic ambiguity, calling for negotiated resolution without assigning responsibility or endorsing any specific framework.

No new membership decisions. The summit produced no announcement on the next wave of BRICS expansion, despite several nations having expressed interest in full or partner membership. The focus remained on consolidating the 2024 expansion.

Why Does India's BRICS Presidency Matter?

India's chairmanship of BRICS in 2026 — and its role as summit host — carries strategic significance that extends beyond the declaration's text.

India occupies a distinctive position within BRICS: it is simultaneously a founding BRICS member, a Quad partner (with the US, Japan, and Australia), and one of the world's fastest-growing major economies. This position gives India unusual leverage — it can participate in Global South solidarity frameworks while maintaining strategic relationships with Western democracies.

The New Delhi Declaration's emphasis on multipolarity — the idea that global governance should reflect multiple power centres rather than a unipolar or bipolar architecture — aligns with India's longstanding foreign policy doctrine of strategic autonomy: engaging all major powers without exclusive alignment.

For India domestically, hosting the summit carries political and economic signalling value: New Delhi as a venue for global leadership, capable of convening eleven heads of state and producing a substantive multilateral document.

What Does the BRICS Summit 2026 Mean for Global Trade and the Dollar?

The summit's practical impact on dollar dependence will be gradual rather than immediate. The BRICS Payment Task Force's mandate advances a process, not a product. Local-currency trade frameworks require bilateral negotiation, technical infrastructure, and institutional trust — none of which are produced by a single declaration.

The pattern worth tracking is incremental de-dollarisation: each bilateral settlement agreement, each expansion of local-currency trade, each central bank swap line reduces the dollar's share of global transactions by a fraction. Over a decade, fractions accumulate.

For international observers, the more immediate signal from New Delhi is institutional legitimacy. A bloc that can convene eleven diverse nations — spanning democratic and authoritarian systems, market and mixed economies, energy exporters and importers — and produce a 140-point unanimous declaration is demonstrating organisational coherence that sceptics argued BRICS could never achieve at eleven members.

Whether that coherence translates into binding commitments and measurable outcomes is the analytical question that subsequent summits will answer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where was the BRICS Summit 2026 held?

The 18th BRICS Summit was held in New Delhi, India, on September 12–13, 2026. India held the BRICS presidency for 2026 and hosted the summit, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the chair.

How many countries are in BRICS in 2026?

As of 2026, BRICS has eleven full member nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The six new members joined in 2024.

What is the New Delhi Declaration?

The New Delhi Declaration is the official communiqué adopted unanimously by all eleven BRICS leaders at the conclusion of the 2026 summit. It is a 140-point, 45-page document — the longest BRICS leaders' declaration in over a decade — covering trade, payments, AI governance, climate finance, UNSC reform, and critical minerals.

Is BRICS creating a new currency to replace the dollar?

No. The 2026 summit produced no announcement of a BRICS common currency. Instead, the declaration strengthened the mandate of the BRICS Payment Task Force to develop frameworks for local-currency transactions between member nations — a more incremental approach to reducing dollar dependence.

What did BRICS say about the EU Carbon Border Tax (CBAM)?

The New Delhi Declaration characterised the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) as a form of trade protectionism. BRICS nations called for multilateral trade frameworks that do not impose unilateral carbon border measures on developing economies.

Was Vladimir Putin at the BRICS Summit 2026?

Russian President Vladimir Putin was present at the New Delhi summit — his first in-person appearance at a major multilateral gathering in a significant period. The declaration addressed the Russia-Ukraine conflict through diplomatic ambiguity, calling for a negotiated resolution without assigning specific responsibility.

Conclusion

The 18th BRICS Summit produced its longest declaration on record — and its most ambitious agenda to date. The 140-point New Delhi Declaration advances concrete frameworks on payment infrastructure and local-currency trade, stakes out a position on carbon border measures and climate finance, breaks new ground on AI governance, and renews pressure for UNSC reform.

What the declaration does not do is produce binding commitments with enforcement mechanisms. BRICS remains a forum of alignment rather than an institution of obligation — its power lies in the collective signal it sends, not in the architecture of compliance.

The signal from New Delhi is this: a bloc representing a substantial share of the global economy, population, and resource base is building the institutional infrastructure for a multipolar economic order. The pace of that construction, and whether its foundations prove durable across eleven diverse political systems, is the story that will unfold across the summits that follow.