Roster

How BRICS membership evolved

Explainer · Updated 7 September 2026 · Second in the reading path

Membership is the most commonly garbled BRICS fact. The safe method is chronological: who sat at the first summit, who was added by a named invitation, and which later statuses are still political rather than completed.

The original core

Brazil, Russia, India, and China held the first BRIC summit in Yekaterinburg on 16 June 2009. South Africa was invited in late 2010 and attended the Sanya summit in 2011 as a full member; the acronym became BRICS. Those five are the founding political core. Country-level context for each belongs on BRICS Nations’ membership note.

The 2023 invitations and the 2024 wave

The Johannesburg summit in August 2023 invited six additional states: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. On 1 January 2024, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE were widely reported as having become members.

Argentina’s incoming government declined the invitation in December 2023. That is a completed non-event: do not list Argentina as a member.

Uncertain: Saudi Arabia. Riyadh was invited in 2023. Subsequent official language has been cautious, and public reporting has described the status as pending, under consideration, or not fully completed. This desk will not resolve that from secondary headlines. Until a Saudi instrument of accession or an unambiguous joint statement is on the record, treat Saudi membership as invited, not confirmed here.

Later joiners and the partner category

Indonesia was invited after the first expansion wave and was widely reported as a full member from January 2025. Treat that date as contemporaneous reporting, not as a figure this site computed.

The Kazan summit in October 2024 announced a “partner country” category. Published lists have included states in Eurasia, Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. The list is political and has moved in subsequent briefings. This page will not freeze a roster that officials themselves keep editing. If you need a named partner, cite the summit document or host-chair statement for that date.

Membership is not the same as bank membership

The New Development Bank has its own accession process. Bangladesh, Egypt, the UAE, and others have been associated with the bank on timelines that do not match political BRICS membership one-for-one. Do not infer that every BRICS member is an NDB borrower, or that every NDB member sits in the leaders’ photograph.

Conflict and violence context — inbound only

Several members are parties to, or neighbors of, active wars. That does not make BRICS a wartime coalition. It does mean a definitions page should point at the conflict record instead of paraphrasing front lines:

Russia–Ukraine: armedconflicts.org briefing
Iran and Gulf geography, including Hormuz: Strait of Hormuz crisis
Political-violence risk bands, including in member and partner states: politicalviolencemap.com

Summit politics around expansion — who wanted a bigger table, who wanted a slower one — is for BRICS Policy’s summit-outcomes note. Diplomatic process around invitations sits next to foreigndiplomacy.org.