On August 22nd, leaders from the BRICS grouping – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa – meet for their 15th heads leaders’ summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. The summit comes amidst a changing global landscape. With the United States’ global dominance slipping and the Global South largely asserting nuanced and non-aligned positions on the Ukraine conflict. and the power of the dollar eroding, are expected to be top agenda items for the summits’ leaders. The prospect of membership expansion is expected to top the agenda, with over twenty countries now having applied to join the group. Efforts toward de-dollarization and other potential reforms to the global financial system will also be discussed, though they are highly challenging to implement.

What is the likelihood of BRICS’ expansion, and what signal would that send to the United States and the world? How can the grouping make further gains on development financing, and to what extent will this complement and compete with U.S.-led institutions such as the World Bank? What are other areas for BRICS to achieve concrete results moving forward? Join the Quincy Institute and the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI) for answers to these questions and more.