The 18th BRICS Leaders' Summit was held on September 12-13 at the Bharat Mandapam convention centre in New Delhi, India's capital, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as this year's rotating BRICS chair, under the theme "Building Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability." The summit coincided with the 20th anniversary of the BRICS cooperation mechanism. Founding-member leaders in attendance included Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa; Brazil, in the middle of local elections, was represented by Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira rather than President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. On September 12, member states unanimously adopted the New Delhi Declaration, a 140-paragraph document covering reform of the global governance system, international flashpoints, trade and finance, energy and climate, technology, health, agriculture and people-to-people exchanges — the summit's principal outcome document.

One of the most closely watched moments of the summit was the bilateral meeting between President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on September 12. According to statements from China's Foreign Ministry and the Indian Prime Minister's Office, this marked Xi's first trip to India in seven years, since his previous visit in 2019, and the third consecutive face-to-face meeting between the two leaders, following encounters in Kazan, Russia, in October 2024 and in Tianjin, China, in August 2025. Multiple international outlets, including Bloomberg, described the trip as Xi's "first visit to India in seven years," a characterization borne out by the verifiable record.

According to the readout released by China's Foreign Ministry and state media, Xi put forward four points to Modi during the meeting, stressing that China and India should "calibrate direction with an objective and rational strategic understanding," "achieve mutual success through a win-win approach to cooperation," "eliminate interference through the political wisdom of mutual respect and forbearance," and "pursue shared benefit through open and inclusive multilateralism." He also noted that over the past two years, institutional exchanges between the two countries have gradually resumed, cooperation lists have expanded, and bilateral trade has hit new highs. Modi, for his part, said India is willing to view the India-China relationship from a strategic, long-term perspective, to be a partner rather than a rival, and to see each side's development as an opportunity rather than a challenge. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi later summarized the "most important consensus" reached by the two leaders as confirming that China and India should be partners, not rivals.

On the border issue, both sides were notably cautious, with no substantive breakthrough evident. Modi stressed during the talks that peace and tranquility in border areas remain an essential basis for the continued development of bilateral relations, and that both sides should abide by existing agreements and understandings on the boundary question; Xi, for his part, proposed that bilateral relations and the border issue advance on "dual tracks," with both sides using mutual respect and forbearance to jointly maintain peace in border areas. Taken together, the readouts publicly released by both sides show the consensus reached was largely one of principle and direction — agreement to resolve the border issue in a fair, reasonable manner acceptable to both sides, and to jointly safeguard peace along the border — without any specific demarcation plan or timeline being announced. This is a subtle but important difference from some earlier Chinese-language reports describing the two sides as having "reached consensus on resolving the border issue": what was actually agreed concerns the principles and approach for handling the dispute, not a substantive resolution of the border issue itself.

Several international outlets framed the Xi-Modi meeting within the broader arc of India-China relations gradually thawing since the 2020 border clash. Reports from Bloomberg and Al Jazeera described the meeting as an effort by both sides to stabilize ties amid persistent border tensions, and as a continuation of the détente process that began with the 2025 Tianjin meeting. Foreign Policy magazine, in a commentary, called the Modi-Xi meeting the culmination of "a detente." At the same time, some commentary noted that despite the positive tone struck by both leaders, considerable suspicion and friction persist in bilateral trade and economic ties, and that sensitive matters such as troop deployments and infrastructure construction near the Line of Actual Control were not addressed in the publicly released readouts of the talks.

Another widely noted outcome of the summit was China's formal announcement that it will take over the rotating BRICS chairmanship in 2027 and host the 19th BRICS Leaders' Summit. In remarks at the summit on September 12, Xi noted that 2026 marks the 20th anniversary of the BRICS cooperation mechanism, and said China is willing to work with all parties to open a "third golden decade" of BRICS cooperation next year. Several official Chinese outlets described this as BRICS "once again welcoming a China year," recalling that China previously chaired BRICS twice before — hosting the 2011 summit in Sanya and the 2017 summit in Xiamen — making this its third time as host, and the first time in nearly a decade — since the 2017 Xiamen summit — that China will again take on the role of host for this multilateral mechanism. Analysts note that China's upcoming chairmanship comes as the BRICS bloc continues to expand, having admitted Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia (which has not yet completed the legal formalities of full membership) in 2024, further raising the grouping's representativeness and influence on global-governance issues — meaning China's agenda-setting during its chairmanship will draw close international attention.

In terms of the summit's overall agenda, beyond the India-China bilateral track, the gathering also touched on several international flashpoints. Media reports say the leaders exchanged views on the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the situation in Gaza, with related language incorporated into the New Delhi Declaration. The summit also discussed coordinated BRICS positions on global trade governance, multilateral development financing, artificial-intelligence governance and public-health cooperation. Al Jazeera and other outlets noted that the summit took place with Russian President Putin, Chinese President Xi and host Prime Minister Modi appearing together, which much of the Western press treated as an important window into how BRICS members are coordinating their positions vis-à-vis the West.

Beyond the bilateral meeting with Modi, Xi also attended the first-phase session of the 18th BRICS Leaders' Meeting and delivered a keynote address calling on BRICS nations to pool their strength in solidarity and cooperation amid profound shifts in the international landscape; according to an aide to the Russian president, Putin and Xi also held a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit. Under BRICS's usual arrangements, the chairmanship is formally handed from India to China after the summit closes, with China taking on the one-year rotating chairmanship from 2027 until it hosts the next summit; as of this report, China has not yet announced the host city or dates for the 2027 BRICS summit.

It is worth noting that although Chinese statements emphasized the positive outcome of the Xi-Modi meeting, outside analysis generally holds that substantive improvement in India-China relations still faces considerable challenges. Some commentary points out that debate persists within India over economic and trade dependence on China, as well as over border infrastructure construction and security readiness; while the Modi government struck a friendly tone in its public statements, it also continued to stress the precondition of adhering to existing border agreements and maintaining peace along the frontier — read by some as India maintaining a degree of caution and reserve about deepening ties with China. On balance, the summit and the Xi-Modi meeting provided a period of political détente for the India-China relationship, but genuine, substantive progress on resolving the border dispute will still depend on more concrete negotiating mechanisms going forward.