India will welcome leaders from the BRICS bloc to New Delhi on September 12 and 13, hosting a summit expected to spotlight the group’s efforts to build payment systems that bypass the U.S. dollar, at a time when Washington has grown more aggressive about penalizing countries seen as helping Iran dodge sanctions.
The gathering, set for the Bharat Mandapam venue, is the fourth BRICS summit India has hosted and falls under its one-year chairmanship of the bloc, which began in January. Officials have organized the meeting around the banner “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability,” reflecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stated priorities for India’s term at the helm.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has confirmed his attendance, and Indian officials say Chinese President Xi Jinping and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian are also likely to take part. The bloc now includes ten full members — Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia — along with ten partner nations, among them Nigeria, Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Belarus. Combined, its members represent close to half the world’s population and roughly two-fifths of global output when measured by purchasing power, giving the grouping greater economic weight by that metric than the G7.
Central to this year’s discussions is a mechanism known as BRICS Pay, designed to connect the domestic payment networks already used by individual members — including Russia’s SPFS, China’s CIPS, India’s UPI and Brazil’s Pix — so that transactions between them can be settled in local currencies rather than through SWIFT or the dollar. India’s central bank has overseen much of the technical groundwork, and some officials have suggested the system could move toward full operation around the time of this summit.
The timing carries added weight given Washington’s expanding sanctions campaign tied to its six-month conflict with Iran, under which several Indian companies have already been penalized for allegedly facilitating Iranian oil sales. Any visible progress on BRICS payment infrastructure risks sharpening tension with U.S. officials, who have warned that nations assisting Iran’s efforts to skirt sanctions could themselves face consequences.
Other items on the summit’s agenda include cooperation on supply chains, artificial intelligence, energy security, support for smaller businesses, and continued pressure from BRICS members for changes to global governance structures they view as dominated by Western powers.
Brazil hosted the previous summit in Rio de Janeiro in July 2025 and is due to take over the bloc’s chairmanship again ahead of next year’s gathering.
