BRICS Countries List 2026: All 10 Members

Published September 13, 2026 - New Delhi, India. The BRICS countries list in 2026 stands at ten member states after the bloc's gathering in New Delhi on September 12-13: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia. The host summit adopted the 140-paragraph New Delhi Declaration and showcased an expanded bloc that now represents half the world's population (The Straits Times, September 2026).

Member data last verified September 13, 2026 from Al Jazeera, The Straits Times, Times of India, and WION coverage of the New Delhi summit.

Quick Answer

The BRICS countries list 2026 contains 10 members: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the UAE, and Indonesia. The founding four, Brazil, Russia, India, and China, began meeting in 2009; South Africa joined in December 2010; Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE joined on January 1, 2024; and Indonesia joined in January 2025. Collectively they represent 50 percent of the world's population, 40 percent of global GDP, and more than 25 percent of global trade, per figures Prime Minister Modi cited at the New Delhi summit (The Straits Times, September 2026).

BRICS Members List Table

From BRIC to BRICS: 2009-2010

The original grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, and China held its first leaders' summit in 2009, building on a label coined for the four big emerging economies at the start of the decade. South Africa was admitted at the end of December 2010, turning BRIC into BRICS and giving the bloc its first African member. For more than a decade the five-member configuration held, even as the group's share of world output grew (Al Jazeera, September 2026).

The 2024 Expansion

The Johannesburg summit in August 2023 invited a wave of new members, and on January 1, 2024, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates formally joined. The expansion gave BRICS its first Middle Eastern members and put both sides of the West Asia conflict, Iran and the UAE, inside one bloc. That design choice shaped the 2026 summit directly: the New Delhi Declaration was only agreed after 4 a.m. negotiations in which India bridged sharp Iran-UAE differences over the war that began on February 28, 2026, including a rare leader-level meeting between Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and the Abu Dhabi crown prince (Times of India, September 2026).

Indonesia Makes It Ten

Indonesia joined in January 2025 as the tenth member and the first from Southeast Asia, adding the largest economy in the region to a bloc that already spanned three continents. By the New Delhi summit, Indonesia was participating as a full member, and the grouping that walked into Bharat Mandapam represented 50 percent of the world's population and 40 percent of global GDP (The Straits Times, September 2026).

Saudi Arabia, invited at Johannesburg in 2023, has not acceded as a full member and was not among the ten at New Delhi. The bloc also runs a partner-country category for economies that engage without full membership, a middle tier created during the expansion process (Al Jazeera, September 2026).

What the Ten-Member Bloc Did in New Delhi

The 2026 summit marked twenty years since the grouping's formation and its first test at scale: wars in the Middle East and Ukraine disrupting energy and shipping, US tariffs pressing on members, and internal rifts over how to respond. Leaders adopted the New Delhi Declaration unanimously, condemning the Pahalgam attack, backing a two-state solution, expressing serious concern over attacks on IAEA-safeguarded nuclear facilities without naming any country, and urging comprehensive UN reform with greater representation for developing countries (Times of India, India Today, September 2026).

On the economic track, finance ministers and central bank governors objected to tariffs and non-tariff measures they said distort trade and are inconsistent with WTO rules, and the bloc prioritized reducing reliance on the US dollar and expanding non-Western cross-border payment channels (Al Jazeera, WION, September 2026).

Why the Member List Keeps Trending

Search interest in the BRICS countries list spikes around every summit because the membership has changed three times in three years and because the stakes are framed in superpower terms: President Trump has described the bloc as anti-American and threatened punitive tariffs on countries that align with it, while China and Russia used the New Delhi stage to back a larger UN role for Brazil and India and to call for a new, fairer multipolar world order (Al Jazeera, Reuters via Al-Monitor, September 2026).

For exam-prep and current-affairs readers, the safe summary as of September 2026: ten members, 50 percent of world population, 40 percent of global GDP, India holds the 2026 chair, and China takes over in 2027 (The Straits Times, Reuters via Al-Monitor, September 2026).