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  • As BRICS leaders meet in New Delhi this weekend, the grouping faces a familiar question: Is BRICS becoming a meaningful geopolitical actor – or is it little more than a diplomatic talking shop? In her new analysis, BRICS in 2026: A reordering platform?, Dr Alexandra Sitenko challenges the premise behind this debate. BRICS’ inability to speak with one voice on major geopolitical crises should not necessarily be read as failure. Its significance lies elsewhere: in its ability to bring together highly diverse states around areas of shared interest, expand their institutional options and give emerging powers greater room for manoeuvre. Sitenko identifies four mechanisms behind this influence: functional cooperation, institutional layering, flexible geopolitical coordination and identity-based pluralism. Rather than replacing the existing international order, BRICS is gradually reordering it from within – by creating additional options for cooperation and strengthening the collective agency of the Global South. For Europe, this points to an uncomfortable lesson: in an increasingly plural international order, flexibility may be a more powerful basis for cooperation than shared ideology. As BRICS leaders meet in New Delhi this weekend, the grouping faces a familiar question: Is BRICS becoming a meaningful geopolitical actor – or is it little more than a diplomatic talking shop? In her new analysis, BRICS in 2026: A reordering platform?, Dr Alexandra Sitenko challenges the premise behind this debate. BRICS’ inability to speak with one voice on major geopolitical crises should not necessarily be read as failure. Its significance lies elsewhere: in its ability to bring together highly diverse states around areas of shared interest, expand their institutional options and give emerging powers greater room for manoeuvre. Sitenko identifies four mechanisms behind this influence: functional cooperation, institutional layering, flexible geopolitical coordination and identity-based pluralism. Rather than replacing the existing international order, BRICS is gradually reordering it from within – by creating additional options for cooperation and strengthening the collective agency of the Global South. For Europe, this points to an uncomfortable lesson: in an increasingly plural international order, flexibility may be a more powerful basis for cooperation than shared ideology.