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The summit marking the 25th anniversary of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) will be held in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, from August 31 to September 1, under the theme "25 Years of the SCO: Together Towards Sustainable Peace, Development and Prosperity." Against a backdrop of profound shifts in the international order and accelerating geopolitical realignment, this summit goes beyond the ceremonial gatherings of the past, placing the building of regional security mechanisms, the process of economic integration, and people-to-people and cultural exchange at the core of its agenda, in an attempt to chart a clearer roadmap for the next decade of the world's largest regional organisation.

Since its founding in 2001 by China, Russia and four Central Asian states, the SCO has grown from six founding members into a bloc of ten full member states — China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Belarus and four Central Asian republics — while also admitting Afghanistan and Mongolia as observer states and bringing in 15 dialogue partners, forming a sprawling mechanism spanning 27 countries that cooperates across more than 50 fields. Member states account for roughly half of the world's population and about a quarter of global economic output, making the SCO, in substance as well as name, the world's largest regional international organisation. Under the SCO Charter, the organisation's stated purposes are to strengthen mutual political trust and good-neighbourly friendship among member states, jointly safeguard regional peace, security and stability, and advance multilateral cooperation in trade, economy, science and technology, culture, education, energy, transport and environmental protection.

Security cooperation has always been the SCO's founding purpose. The Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS), one of the organisation's permanent bodies, has been headquartered in Tashkent, Uzbekistan since its establishment in 2002, with participation from the six founding member states — China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It coordinates member states' efforts against the "three evil forces" of terrorism, separatism and extremism primarily through information sharing, capacity building and joint operational mechanisms. As host of this summit and chair of the SCO for 2025–2026, Kyrgyzstan has put forward three concrete security initiatives: establishing an International Centre for Combating Organised Crime in Bishkek, deepening cooperation against cybercrime and digital threats, and strengthening coordination on countering terrorism, separatism and extremism — initiatives expected to be reflected in the summit's outcome documents. In addition, the SCO has regularly held "Peace Mission" joint counter-terrorism military exercises since 2005, hosted on a rotating basis and jointly conducted by member states' armed forces — an important platform for testing and strengthening the collective capacity to respond to terrorist threats, and one of the longest-running and most institutionalised components of the organisation's security cooperation.

On economic integration, the SCO is accelerating its transformation from a traditional security-cooperation body into a comprehensive economic governance platform. The 2025 Tianjin summit approved the "SCO Development Strategy for the Next Decade (2026–2035)" and adopted 24 outcome documents covering security, economic and humanitarian cooperation as well as institutional development, and made the important political decision to establish an SCO Development Bank, which China is now working to advance under principles of international standing, standardisation and high standards. At the Tianjin summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for expanding the use of local-currency settlement to strengthen member states' resilience to external shocks and financial autonomy; a subsequent meeting in Moscow held consultations on implementing this vision, and the Bishkek summit is expected to further advance a 2026–2030 trade action plan. If the institutional reforms, financial initiatives and economic roadmap are endorsed, 2026 may come to be remembered as the moment the SCO entered a new stage of Eurasian integration. Notably, the SCO already established an Interbank Consortium back in 2005, made up of the national development banks of member states to provide financing for regional infrastructure and industrial-capacity cooperation projects; the SCO Development Bank now being planned is seen as a further expansion and upgrade of this existing mechanism.

People-to-people and cultural exchange serve as an important bond sustaining the SCO's cohesion. The SCO Youth Cultural Festival, launched during the 2025 Tianjin summit, offers 5,000 scholarships for joint academic programmes, promoting youth cooperation among member states in science, technology and education. In July of the same year, the SCO's Inter-Civilisational Dialogue brought together 300 delegates to discuss cultural heritage preservation, with Pakistan and Tajikistan pledging a combined 10 million US dollars for heritage restoration projects. In 2026, the SCO Civilisation Dialogue Forum will move to Kolkata, India, covering topics including intercultural dialogue, shared heritage, the arts as soft power, civilisational linkages in a multipolar Eurasia, and youth engagement — reflecting the organisation's effort to use cultural ties to reinforce the foundations of its political and economic cooperation. Separately, the SCO University network, operating since 2010, spans dozens of higher-education institutions across member states, promoting youth academic mobility through mutual credit recognition and joint-training mechanisms, making it one of the longest-running mechanisms in the field of people-to-people exchange.

Analysts in multiple countries believe the SCO is playing an increasingly significant role amid the transformation of the international order. A Tajik expert told Xinhua recently that the SCO has developed into a key platform for Eurasian cooperation, making a tangible contribution to building a multipolar, just world order based on international law and mutual respect, reflected in its role in strengthening multilateralism, advancing regional cooperation and shaping a new architecture of global governance. Some analysts project that if cooperation among member states continues to deepen, SCO economies could account for roughly one-third of global GDP by 2030. However, more cautious observations have also come from Western media and research institutions: some commentary notes that over 25 years the SCO has more often "institutionalised coexistence rather than achieved genuine convergence," with member states still showing clear divergences in security interests and foreign-policy strategy; other analyses suggest that as India-US relations and India's own strategic choices evolve, its reliance on the SCO is diminishing. These differing voices indicate that the SCO's expansion and broadening agenda do not equate to complete unity of internal positions. Related commentary has also framed this summit as a window for observing the degree of India's engagement with the SCO — as a country that is simultaneously a member of the BRICS grouping and the Quad security dialogue with the United States, Japan and Australia, India's positioning within the SCO framework continues to draw close attention from international observers.

As is customary, the summit is expected to issue a Bishkek Declaration marking the SCO's 25th anniversary, along with joint statements on regional and international issues. Analysts generally believe that, against a backdrop of accelerating restructuring of global governance and rising geopolitical uncertainty, whether the SCO can translate its multiple agendas of security dialogue, economic integration and cultural exchange into concrete, workable cooperation outcomes will determine whether this regional organisation can genuinely consolidate its real influence as the "world's largest regional cooperation organisation" over the next decade. As this year's rotating chair, whether the various security and governance initiatives put forward by Kyrgyzstan are accepted by other member states and translated into standing mechanisms will also serve as an important benchmark for measuring the summit's concrete outcomes.