Diplomacy in the Making: BRICS Young Diplomats Forum, New Delhi, May 2026

Policy Update
Sruti Halder

Abstract

In May 2026, the Ministry of External Affairs of India (MEA), through the Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service (SSIFS), hosted the BRICS Young Diplomats Forum (BYDF) in New Delhi. The forum took place between 18–23 May, bringing together sixteen mid-career diplomats from eight BRICS countries and Heads of Diplomatic Academies from nine BRICS countries (SSIFS, 2026). Convened under India’s 2026 BRICS Chairship theme, “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”, formally unveiled by External Affairs Minister (EAM) Dr. S. Jaishankar on 13 January 2026 (Prasar Bharati News Services Division, 2026), the Forum combined experiential learning, simulation exercises, and institutional dialogue to prepare the next generation of BRICS diplomats ahead of the 18th BRICS Summit scheduled for New Delhi later in the year.

This article draws primarily on the official SSIFS newsletter and Government of India press releases to examine the Forum’s design, its geopolitical and institutional significance, the economic and cultural dividends of youth-diplomacy platforms, and the structural gaps, including uneven country participation, fragmented institutional ownership across ministries, and limited follow-through mechanisms, that could blunt its long-term impact. It concludes with recommendations to institutionalise the BYDF as a recurring, better-coordinated capacity-building instrument within India’s wider Global South diplomatic training architecture.

Keywords: BRICS, Young Diplomats Forum, India’s BRICS Chairship, SSIFS, Ministry of External Affairs, diplomatic training, Global South, multilateralism

1. Introduction 

Multilateral groupings increasingly recognise that the durability of cooperation depends not only on summit declarations but on the professional networks quietly built among the officials who will negotiate future agreements. BRICS, an eleven-member bloc comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, has invested in this logic through the BRICS Young Diplomats Forum, a professional capacity-building initiative administered by the diplomatic academies of member states.

India last hosted the BYDF in Kolkata in 2016, when BRICS was still a five-member bloc and the forum yielded only non-binding recommendations with no accompanying Conference of Heads of Diplomatic Academies. The 2026 edition, held a decade later under India’s fourth BRICS Chairship and across an expanded eleven-member grouping, therefore marked both a renewal of a dormant mechanism and a signal of India’s intent to shape BRICS’ institutional culture in the year culminating in the New Delhi Summit (SSIFS, 2026).

2. Background 

The Ministry of External Affairs of India formally launched the theme, logo, and official website (brics2026.gov.in) for India’s BRICS Chairship on 13 January 2026, with EAM Dr. S. Jaishankar describing the year’s approach as “humanity first” and “people-centric,” anchored in four pillars: resilience, innovation, cooperation, and sustainability (Prasar Bharati News Services Division, 2026). Under this mandate, India hosted the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in New Delhi on 14–15 May 2026, chaired by Dr. S. Jaishankar (Ministry of External Affairs, 2026), followed almost immediately by the BYDF from 18–23 May 2026.

The Forum was organised by SSIFS, the MEA’s dedicated diplomatic-training institute established in 1986, which also administers the Global South Young Diplomats Forum and mid-career training programmes for Indian Foreign Service officers (SSIFS, 2026). The 2026 BYDF convened on the SSIFS campus at Old JNU Campus, New Delhi, with the concluding plenary held at The Imperial Hotel, and brought together sixteen diplomats and Heads of Diplomatic Academies from Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, and South Africa, The programme was inaugurated by Shri Sudhakar Dalela, Secretary (Economic Relations) and India’s BRICS Sherpa; Shri Shambhu L. Hakki, Joint Secretary (Multilateral Economic Relations) and BRICS Sous Sherpa.

The six-day programme was structured around four thematic pillars mirroring India’s Chairship priorities, each producing a concrete deliverable as mentioned below:

Source: Ministry of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service, Videsh Sewa Newsletter, Volume 05, May 2026 (SSIFS, 2026).

3. Analysis

3.1 Geopolitical and Strategic Shifts 

The BYDF’s location and timing were not incidental. Coming immediately after the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and roughly four months before the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, the Forum functioned as a bridge between ministerial diplomacy and the socialisation of a younger diplomatic cohort into BRICS’ institutional norms (SSIFS, 2026). The “Cooperation Communiqué” module on the third day simulated the procedures of an actual BRICS Summit, including mock press conferences and negotiation role-play conducted by Amb. Sanjay Bhattacharya.

The module illustrates how India used the Forum to rehearse the diplomatic choreography it will need to manage as summit host later in the year (SSIFS, 2026). This reflects a broader pattern in BRICS diplomacy since its expansion to 11 members: with a bloc spanning divergent political systems and regional groupings, informal socialisation platforms such as the BYDF serve a trust-building function that formal ministerial tracks, constrained by consensus-based decision-making, cannot always perform.

3.2 Economic Diplomacy 

While the BYDF is not a financial instrument, its “Innovation Portfolio” module on the second day, curated by the Observer Research Foundation and featuring more than a dozen speakers on artificial intelligence, semiconductor supply chains, biotechnology, and space governance, signals where India sees future BRICS economic cooperation converging: technology-led statecraft and digital public infrastructure (SSIFS, 2026).

The Sustainability Roadmap module similarly referenced India-anchored institutions such as the International Solar Alliance, the Global Biofuels Alliance, and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure as models for collaborative green governance (SSIFS, 2026), positioning India’s own multilateral initiatives as templates for intra-BRICS economic diplomacy. For SSIFS, hosting successive cohorts of foreign diplomats, from the BYDF to the Global South Young Diplomats Forum to bespoke national programmes such as its ongoing capacity-building course for Nepalese diplomats, has become a low-cost, high-visibility instrument of India’s soft power under its “Neighbourhood First” and Global South outreach frameworks (SSIFS, 2026).

Separately, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports’ Department of Youth Affairs has run a parallel BRICS Youth Track through 2026, including a first BRICS Youth Coordination Meeting on 25 March 2026 and a BRICS Youth Entrepreneurship Working Group meeting in Indore on 20–21 May 2026 (Press Information Bureau, 2026a; Press Information Bureau, 2026b), a reminder that India’s BRICS Chairship year has generated several distinct youth-oriented tracks across ministries, each with its own economic and institutional footprint.

3.3 Challenges and Structural Impediments 

Several structural gaps merit attention. 

• First, participation was uneven: only eight of BRICS’ 11 members sent diplomats to the BYDF cohort, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and no Indian trainees featured among the sixteen-member roster, although India was represented at the level of Heads of Diplomatic Academies (SSIFS, 2026). This partial participation limits the Forum’s claim to being a fully representative BRICS-wide institution. 
• Second, the outputs, a Resilience Playbook, Innovation Portfolio, Cooperation Communiqué, and Sustainability Roadmap, were compiled into a Compendium “for future reference for forthcoming BRICS Presidencies” (SSIFS, 2026), but no public mechanism currently verifies whether these documents feed into actual BRICS working-group agendas. 
• Third, the coexistence of the MEA-run BYDF and the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports’ separate BRICS Youth Council and Youth Summit, the latter held in Gandhinagar on 19–20 August 2026 under the same Chairship theme (Press Information Bureau, 2026c), points to a degree of institutional fragmentation in India’s BRICS youth engagement, with diplomatic-track and youth-development-track programmes running in parallel without an evident common secretariat. The fragmentation duplicates ministerial effort and resources, produces parallel outputs with no cross-referral between the two tracks, and creates confusion over which forum represents “India’s BRICS youth engagement” ahead of the Summit.
• Fourth, as a short, six-day residential programme, the BYDF cannot substitute for sustained professional exchange; its emphasis on cultural immersion, including the Taj Mahal visit, is valuable for goodwill but modest in producing measurable policy capacity. Finally, unlike the Global South Young Diplomats Forum, which SSIFS runs annually, the BYDF had lapsed for a decade before its 2026 revival, raising questions about institutional continuity once India’s Chairship concludes.

3.4 India’s Role and Strategic Imperatives 

For India, the BYDF reinforced its self-positioning as a bridge-builder within BRICS, combining the “humanity-first” rhetoric articulated at the January 2026 Chairship launch with concrete institutional stewardship (Prasar Bharati News Services Division, 2026; SSIFS, 2026). By pairing the Forum with the high-level Conference of BRICS Heads of Diplomatic Academies, India elevated a youth-training exercise into a quasi-ministerial dialogue, with academy heads from Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, and South Africa issuing collective statements on the future of diplomatic education (SSIFS, 2026). This dual-track design, young diplomats below, institutional deans above, allows India to simultaneously invest in long-term relationship capital and secure buy-in from the institutions that will train future BRICS negotiators, an imperative given that India will hand over the chairship after the September 2026 Summit.

4. Policy Recommendations

Building on the Forum’s evident strengths and the gaps identified through official records, the following recommendations could strengthen the BYDF as a durable BRICS institution:

1. Institutionalise Annual Recurrence: BRICS member states, through the Sherpa mechanism, should formally embed the BYDF into the bloc’s rotating chairship calendar, rather than leaving its revival to individual chair countries’ discretion, addressing the decade-long gap between the 2016 and 2026 editions.
2. Universal Member Participation: The BRICS Sherpa track should coordinate with newer members: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Ethiopia, to secure full 11-member diplomat participation in future cohorts, closing the representational gap evident in the 2026 roster.
3. Formal Output Integration: The Resilience Playbook, Innovation Portfolio, Cooperation Communiqué, and Sustainability Roadmap should be routed through a defined Sherpa-track review process, with a public annual report on how youth-forum recommendations were considered in BRICS working-group deliberations.
4. Inter-Ministerial Coordination: The MEA and the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports should establish a joint coordination cell to align the diplomatic-track BYDF with the youth-development-track BRICS Youth Council and Summit, avoiding duplication and maximising cross-referral of participants and outputs.
5. Rotating Host Diversification: While SSIFS provides strong institutional infrastructure, rotating the BYDF’s physical hosting among BRICS diplomatic academies would deepen collective ownership and reduce the perception of an India-centric programme.
6. Extended Fellowship and Alumni Network: A short post-forum fellowship 6-12months after the residential Forum, coupled with a formal BYDF alumni network, would help translate the intensive six-day exposure into sustained professional networks and policy contributions across chairship cycles.

5. Conclusion 

The 2026 BRICS Young Diplomats Forum illustrates how India used its Chairship year to convert a dormant capacity-building mechanism into an active instrument of institutional diplomacy, blending experiential training, simulation, and high-level academy dialogue ahead of the New Delhi Summit. Its four thematic outputs and the accompanying Conference of Heads of Diplomatic Academies demonstrate a genuine effort to embed India’s Chairship priorities, resilience, innovation, cooperation, and sustainability, into the professional formation of BRICS diplomats.

Yet the Forum’s uneven member participation, its short duration, the absence of a transparent mechanism linking its outputs to formal BRICS processes, and the visible fragmentation between ministry-led youth tracks suggest that its long-term value will depend on whether successive chairs choose to institutionalise, rather than periodically revive, this platform. As BRICS continues to expand and its internal diversity grows, sustained and better-coordinated investment in such people-centred diplomatic training may prove as consequential for the bloc’s cohesion as its ministerial declarations.

References

Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. (2026, May 29). Videsh Sewa: SSIFS Newsletter, Volume 5 – May 2026. https://ssifs.mea.gov.in/public/uploads/section/wn/1780028805.pdf

Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. (2026). Home – Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service. https://ssifs.mea.gov.in/

Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India. (2026a, March 25). India conducted first BRICS Youth Coordination Meeting 2026. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2245925&reg=48&lang=2

Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India. (2026b, May 19). BRICS Youth Entrepreneurship Working Group Meeting under India’s BRICS Chairship to be held in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2262835&reg=3&lang=1

Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India. (2026c, August 20). BRICS Youth Council and Summit 2026: Youth delegates visit Statue of Unity on Day 2. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2301721&reg=48&lang=2

Prasar Bharati News Services Division, Government of India. (2026, January 13). EAM Dr S Jaishankar launches logo, theme and website for BRICS Summit 2026. All India Radio News. https://www.newsonair.gov.in/eam-dr-s-jaishankar-launches-logo-theme-and-website-for-brics-summit-2026

Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. (2026). BRICS India 2026. https://brics2026.gov.in

Tribune India. (2026, May 12). BRICS foreign ministers will exchange views on global, regional issues: MEA as India gears up to host summit. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/bharat-mandapam-talks/brics-foreign-ministers-will-exchange-views-on-global-regional-issues-mea-as-india-gears-up-to-host-summit

Tribune India. (2026, May 22). EAM Jaishankar discusses BRICS theme of resilience, innovation with grouping’s young diplomats. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/brics/eam-jaishankar-discusses-brics-theme-of-resilience-innovation-with-groupings-young-diplomats

About the Contributor

Sruti Halder is pursuing an MSc in Economics at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics. She is committed to leveraging data-driven research and evidence-based policymaking to promote inclusive and sustainable socio-economic development. 

Acknowledgment

I am writing to express my sincere gratitude to IMPRI (Impact and Policy Research Institute) for providing me with the opportunity to prepare this policy update article and for fostering a rigorous learning environment that connects research with public policy practice.

Reviewers: Madhuritha D, Lahari

Disclaimer

All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the organisation.

Read more at IMPRI:

BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting New Delhi, May, 2026: Strengthening Global Governance and the Voice of the Global South

Madhya Pradesh Department wise Schemes Update 2026