The original members of BRICS were Brazil, Russia, India, and China, which began meeting as BRIC in 2006 and held their first leaders' summit in 2009. South Africa joined in 2010, giving the grouping its current acronym. BRICS expanded in 2024 with the admission of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia formally joined in January 2025. Official BRICS sources also list Saudi Arabia among the member states, although its status has been described inconsistently (see Status of Saudi Arabia). In addition to its members, BRICS has a formal category of partner countries and uses several formats for engagement with other states and international organizations.
Forms of affiliation and participation BRICS is an informal intergovernmental coordination forum rather than a treaty-based international organization. It has no constitutive treaty, permanent secretariat or budget of its own. Official BRICS material distinguishes two standing categories of participation: member states and partner countries. Other forms of participation, including BRICS Outreach, BRICS Plus and invitations to external-engagement countries or international organizations, concern participation in particular meetings and do not constitute additional categories of membership.
Status or format Nature Participation Member state Standing BRICS participation category. Members participate throughout the BRICS framework, and decisions among them are taken by consensus. Partner country Standing participation category created at the 16th BRICS summit in Kazan in 2024. Partners are individually invited to the BRICS leaders' summit and meetings of foreign ministers. They may be invited to other meetings subject to consultation and consensus among the members, and may endorse summit declarations, foreign-ministers' declarations and other final documents. BRICS Outreach External-engagement meeting format, introduced by South Africa in 2013. The rotating presidency may invite countries from its geographic region to participate in selected BRICS activities. Such participation does not itself confer member or partner status. BRICS Plus External-engagement meeting format, introduced by China in 2017. The rotating presidency may invite countries from outside its geographic region to participate. Participation in BRICS Plus is not a separate membership category. Other invited participants Ad hoc participation in particular meetings. States that are neither members nor partners, as well as international organizations, may be invited to specific meetings or summit sessions. An invitation to a meeting does not by itself create an affiliation status. Applicant or interested country No standing participation status. A declaration of interest or application does not itself confer member or partner status. The official accession process distinguishes interested countries from potential members or partners, with final admission requiring consensus among the BRICS members.
Accession process For full membership, official BRICS guidance describes three stages: an expression of interest, designation as a potential BRICS member and, following consensus among the members, admission as a member. A parallel process applies to partner-country status. Criteria considered for partners include geographic balance, good diplomatic relations with all BRICS members, United Nations membership and support for multilateralism and reform of global governance.
Status of Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia's status within BRICS has remained unresolved, with BRICS institutions and successive chair countries generally treating it as a member while Saudi official sources have repeatedly stopped short of unequivocally confirming its accession.
At the 15th BRICS summit in Johannesburg in August 2023, Saudi Arabia was one of six countries invited to become full members of BRICS from 1 January 2024. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates subsequently began participating as members, while Argentina declined its invitation. Saudi Arabia, however, did not publicly confirm that it had accepted the invitation. In January 2024, Saudi Minister of Commerce Majid bin Abdullah Al Qasabi said that the kingdom had "not yet officially joined BRICS". The following month, a Saudi official source told press agencies that Saudi Arabia had "not yet responded to the invitation to join BRICS" and that the invitation remained under consideration.
Despite this, BRICS institutions began listing Saudi Arabia as a member. During Brazil's 2025 chairship, the official BRICS website described the group as comprising eleven members, explicitly including Saudi Arabia, and stated that the eleven member countries participated in BRICS meetings and consensus-based decision-making. Reuters nevertheless reported in May 2025 that Saudi Arabia had "held off formally joining" the group despite being listed as a member by BRICS itself.
Saudi official terminology has also varied between meetings. At the 17th BRICS summit in July 2025, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said that Minister of Foreign Affairs Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud headed the Saudi delegation "as an invited country to join the BRICS group". The inconsistency became particularly apparent during BRICS foreign ministers' meetings in New Delhi in May 2026. On 14 May, SPA reported that Saudi Arabia participated "in its capacity as a BRICS member country"; a report published by the same agency the following day described Saudi Arabia as participating "as an invited country".
The ambiguity was not resolved at the 18th BRICS summit in New Delhi in September 2026. As the 2026 BRICS chair, the Government of India explicitly classified Saudi Arabia as a full member. A government backgrounder published two days before the summit stated that "BRICS comprises 11 countries", including Saudi Arabia, and further stated that Saudi Arabia had become a full member in January 2024. Saudi Arabia nevertheless again used invited-country terminology. Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan travelled to New Delhi on behalf of Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman to head the Saudi delegation, while Saudi reporting described him as participating "as a representative of an invited country".
The summit programme provided a further indication of the distinction between Saudi Arabia's institutional classification and its participation. The programme released by India's Ministry of External Affairs reserved the opening day's principal events for leaders of BRICS member countries, including a members-only closed session beginning at 14:35 and subsequent events for member-country leaders. An official Indian diplomatic arrival list, however, gave Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud an estimated arrival time of 17:30 on 12 September, after the closed session and the other scheduled member-leader events. On the published timings, the Saudi delegation was therefore not scheduled to be present for the opening members-only programme. This does not by itself determine Saudi Arabia's formal BRICS status, particularly as the arrival list stated that its details were subject to change, but it added to the discrepancy between BRICS's classification of Saudi Arabia as a member and the more qualified manner in which the kingdom participated in the summit.
Independent reporting continued to distinguish Saudi Arabia from the ten states whose accession was regarded as completed. On 12 September 2026, Reuters described Saudi Arabia as having been invited to join BRICS but as having "yet to join".
As a result, Saudi Arabia has since 2024 occupied an unusual position within BRICS: official BRICS sources and successive chair countries have listed and treated it institutionally as a member, while Saudi authorities have not consistently confirmed accession and have repeatedly described the kingdom's participation as that of an invited country. The 2026 New Delhi summit did not resolve this discrepancy; instead, the host government continued to count Saudi Arabia among the eleven members while Saudi reporting and the published participation schedule remained consistent with a more qualified form of participation.
Member states
Official BRICS sources and the Government of India, which holds the 2026 BRICS presidency, list eleven member states.
Country Capital Area(km2) Population(2025) Density(/km2) GDP per cap.(PPP) HDICurrency Official languages Leaders Accession ,Federative Republic of Brasília 8,515,767 213,583,750 23.8 Brazilian real (R$) (BRL) Portuguese also see Languages of Brazil Head of State and Government: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva 16 June 2009 (Informally, September 2006) Russian Federation Moscow 17,075,400 146,028,325 8.4 Russian rouble (₽) (RUB) Russian also see Languages of Russia Head of State: Vladimir PutinHead of Government: Mikhail Mishustin ,Republic of New Delhi 3,287,240 1,417,492,000 430.7 Indian rupee (₹) (INR) Hindi (Devanagari script)EnglishAlso see Languages of India Head of State: Droupadi MurmuHead of Government: Narendra Modi ,People's Republic of Beijing 9,640,011 1,408,280,000 147 Renminbi (Chinese yuan, ¥)(CNY) Standard Chinese written in simplified characterssee also languages of China Party General Secretary and State Representative: Xi JinpingHead of Government: Li Qiang ,Republic of Pretoria (executive)Cape Town (legislative)Bloemfontein (judicial) 1,221,037 63,100,945 50.8 South African rand (R) (ZAR) 12 languages Head of State and Government: Cyril Ramaphosa 24 December 2010"New era as South Africa joins BRICS" . SouthAfrica.info. 11 April 2010. Retrieved 2 December 2012. , Arab Republic of Cairo 1,010,408 107,271,260 108.32 Egyptian pound (LE)(EGP) Arabic Head of State: Abdel Fattah el-SisiHead of Government: Mostafa Madbouly 1 January 2024 , Federal Democratic Republic of Addis Ababa 1,104,300 109,499,000 92.7 Ethiopian birr (Br)(ETB) AfarAmharicOromoSomaliTigrinya Head of State: Taye Atske SelassieHead of Government: Abiy Ahmed , Islamic Republic of Tehran 1,648,195 92,417,681 52 Iranian rial (Rl) (IRR) Persian Head of State: Mojtaba KhameneiHead of Government: Masoud Pezeshkian Abu Dhabi83,60011,027,129 132 UAE dirham () (AED) Arabic Head of State: Mohamed bin Zayed Al NahyanHead of Government: Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum , Republic of Jakarta 1,904,569 284,438,782 143 Indonesian rupiah (Rp) (IDR) Indonesian Head of State and Government: Prabowo Subianto6 January 2025
Disputed member Country Capital Area(km2) Population(2025) Density(/km2) GDP per cap.(PPP) HDICurrency Official languages Leaders Accession ,Kingdom of Riyadh 2,149,690 34,566,328 16.1 Saudi riyal (ر.س)(SAR) Arabic Head of State: Salman of Saudi ArabiaHead of Government: Mohammed bin Salman Invited to join from 1 January 2024
Partner countries The partner-country category was created at the 16th BRICS summit in Kazan in 2024. It is a formal participation category distinct from full membership and should not be confused with observer status. Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda and Uzbekistan became the first BRICS partner countries in January 2025. Vietnam was formally admitted on 13 June 2025, becoming the tenth partner country.