When India unveiled the official website, theme and logo for its forthcoming BRICS Presidency in 2026, the choreography was familiar: symbolism, carefully calibrated language, and an invocation of cooperation in an era of geopolitical fragmentation. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s remarks framed the moment as historic, humane and transformational. Yet behind the polished visual identity and the rhetoric of resilience and sustainability lies a far more complex legal and strategic reality. BRICS today is no longer a loose coalition of emerging economies. It is an expanding political platform that increasingly tests the boundaries of international economic law, financial governance, sanctions regimes, development finance norms and the post Second World War institutional order.
India will assume leadership at a time when BRICS is not merely evolving, but structurally mutating. With eleven full members and ten partner countries, the grouping now represents over forty percent of the world’s population and roughly a quarter of global GDP measured in purchasing power parity terms. Its decisions increasingly interact with binding international obligations under the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the United Nations Charter and a dense web of bilateral investment treaties and sanctions regulations.
The ceremonial launch of a logo cannot conceal the magnitude of what India is stepping into.
A platform without a treaty but with legal consequences
BRICS remains an unusual creature in international law. It has no founding treaty comparable to the Charter of the United Nations or the Articles of Agreement of the IMF. It is instead a structured political forum that operates through consensus declarations, ministerial meetings, working groups and two institutional arms: the New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement.
Yet informality does not mean legal irrelevance. Every joint communiqué, development lending decision, financial settlement mechanism and trade facilitation initiative undertaken under the BRICS banner intersects with binding international legal regimes. India’s presidency will therefore not be symbolic stewardship but de facto legal navigation across multiple regulatory fault lines.
The theme announced by New Delhi, “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”, sounds benign. In practice, each of these pillars engages contested legal terrain.
Resilience today is code for supply chain reconfiguration, strategic autonomy in energy and technology, and insulation from sanctions. Innovation increasingly refers to artificial intelligence, digital currencies and cross border data governance. Cooperation touches sanctions evasion concerns, defence coordination and diplomatic alignment. Sustainability links directly to climate finance obligations under the Paris Agreement and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.
India will be chairing discussions where China, Russia and Iran sit at the same table as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and South Africa, countries whose legal obligations to Western financial systems diverge sharply.
BRICS expansion since 2024 has incorporated states under extensive unilateral sanctions regimes, most notably Russia and Iran. While such sanctions are not imposed by the United Nations Security Council and therefore not universally binding under Article 41 of the UN Charter, they dominate global financial infrastructure because of the extraterritorial reach of United States and European regulations.
India, as chair, will face unavoidable legal exposure. The US Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, the EU sanctions framework and the Office of Foreign Assets Control regulations can be triggered not by political alignment but by transactional conduct. Any BRICS level initiative involving alternative payment systems, energy trade settlements or development lending to sanctioned entities may carry secondary sanctions risk for Indian banks, state enterprises and technology firms.
India has historically practised strategic ambiguity, purchasing Russian oil while maintaining defence cooperation with the United States and Australia under the Quad. The presidency will magnify this balancing act. Unlike rhetorical alignment, financial infrastructure cooperation generates documentary trails, compliance obligations and exposure under international banking law.
The New Development Bank, headquartered in Shanghai and chaired previously by a former Brazilian president, has already suspended some Russian projects to avoid jeopardising access to international capital markets. India’s chairship will have to navigate whether BRICS accelerates financial decoupling or continues partial compliance with Western dominated systems.
This is not a philosophical choice. It is a legal one, governed by correspondent banking rules, anti money laundering frameworks, Financial Action Task Force recommendations and sovereign debt covenants.
Digital governance and the battle over standards
Innovation is the second pillar of India’s theme, but innovation in BRICS increasingly means digital public infrastructure, artificial intelligence governance and cross border data flows.
India promotes its Digital Public Infrastructure model through platforms such as Aadhaar, UPI and DigiLocker. China advances state centric cyber sovereignty. Russia favours data localisation as a national security doctrine. The Gulf states pursue cloud infrastructure partnerships with Western firms.
There is no harmonised legal framework among BRICS for data protection, algorithmic accountability or artificial intelligence safety. India operates under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023. China enforces the Cybersecurity Law, Data Security Law and Personal Information Protection Law. Russia has its Federal Law on Personal Data. These regimes are incompatible in key respects.
Any attempt to construct BRICS wide digital cooperation frameworks will collide with the principles of adequacy, consent, purpose limitation and cross border transfer restrictions embedded in these domestic laws. They will also be scrutinised by the European Union under the General Data Protection Regulation, which conditions data transfers on equivalent protections.
India’s presidency therefore risks becoming a forum where digital sovereignty rhetoric collides with commercial reality and international compliance.
Sustainability, the fourth pillar, is perhaps the most legally treacherous. The New Development Bank finances infrastructure projects in developing economies, many of which involve fossil fuels, mining and transport corridors.
These projects intersect with international environmental law, including the Paris Agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity and customary principles such as transboundary harm and environmental impact assessment. They also attract scrutiny from environmental non governmental organisations and rating agencies that influence sovereign borrowing costs.
India itself is facing litigation domestically and internationally over environmental clearances, coastal regulation zone violations and climate commitments under its Nationally Determined Contributions.
If BRICS promotes infrastructure financing without robust environmental safeguards comparable to those of the World Bank or Asian Development Bank, it risks being labelled a regulatory arbitrage platform. That would invite trade retaliation, reputational damage and potential exclusion from climate finance mechanisms.
The admission of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Indonesia has transformed BRICS from a cohesive economic club into a geopolitical mosaic. These states differ radically in governance models, treaty obligations, military alliances and legal systems.
Unlike the European Union, BRICS has no acquis communautaire, no binding dispute resolution court and no enforcement mechanism. Consensus is political, not juridical.
India’s presidency will mark the twentieth anniversary of BRICS. It will also expose the structural weakness of a grouping attempting to operate as a global governance actor without legal architecture.
Declarations can be issued. Logos can be launched. Websites can be polished. But when disputes arise over trade barriers, currency settlement failures, technology transfer restrictions or investment expropriation, there is no BRICS court, no arbitration centre, no binding charter.
Members fall back on the WTO Dispute Settlement Body, bilateral investment treaties and domestic courts.
This undermines the narrative of an alternative world order. Legal order is what separates symbolism from power.
India’s strategic calculation
India enters its presidency while maintaining defence ties with Russia, economic integration with the West, rivalry with China and leadership ambitions in the Global South. It is also a candidate for permanent membership of the UN Security Council, a position that requires visible commitment to the existing international legal order.
Chairing BRICS places India in a paradox. It must amplify the voice of developing economies while reassuring investors that it remains anchored in legal predictability. It must promote financial innovation while respecting sanctions regimes it did not create but cannot ignore. It must speak of humanity first diplomacy while operating in a forum that includes states accused of systematic violations of international humanitarian law.
This is not moral grandstanding. It is structural tension.
Even the newly launched BRICS 2026 website is not merely a communications tool. It will host policy documents, declarations, procurement notices and cooperation frameworks that may later be cited in litigation, arbitration or regulatory proceedings. Language choices matter. Commitments implied can become expectations enforceable through soft law mechanisms and investor state dispute settlement.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs will have to ensure that the digital infrastructure of its presidency complies with data protection laws, cybersecurity obligations and accessibility norms. Failure could expose the government to domestic legal challenges under Indian constitutional jurisprudence on privacy and administrative fairness.
India’s BRICS chairship will be celebrated in photographs and communiqués. But its real legacy will be written in contracts, compliance audits, trade disputes and regulatory filings.
The grouping now sits at the intersection of sanctions law, financial regulation, digital governance, climate obligations and development finance accountability. Any serious assessment of BRICS in 2026 must therefore move beyond symbolism.
The logo may depict harmony. The theme may promise resilience. The rhetoric may invoke humanity.
But the test of leadership will be legal coherence in a fractured international system.
India will not merely host BRICS.
It will be judged by how responsibly it navigates the law of a world that no longer agrees on who writes the rules, but still punishes those who break them.