By Yaroslav Lissovolik

Brazil’s authorities have unveiled their plans for the upcoming BRICS summit to be held in Rio de Janeiro on July 6-7, 2025. Throughout the past several years one of the key themes of the BRICS summits has been the BRICS+ outreach – an event that revealed the trends in BRICS cooperation with the wider international community of the developing world. According to Brazil’s authorities, the countries that are going to be invited to the BRICS summit in 2025 include Uruguay, Colombia and Mexico. There may be other developing economies outside of the BRICS core that will likely participate in the BRICS summit, including the economies of the newly created BRICS partnership belt.

Thus far across the three main regions of the Global South – Africa, Asia and South America – it is South America that has the lowest representation within the BRICS core or the expanded partnership. It is then only to be expected that during Brazil’s chairmanship in the grouping a particular emphasis would be placed on the outreach to Latin American economies. Of the three economies invited to the summit, none are either in the BRICS core or the partnership belt – this should allow for greater complementarity between the various BRICS outreach modalities.

There is also important significance behind the invitation of each of the three Latin American economies to the BRICS summit. With respect to Uruguay, this is a key member of the Mercosur bloc that plays an important role in the regional integration dynamics. Colombia is one of the largest economies in South America that is likely to play a crucial role in the continental efforts to coordinate economic cooperation. Mexico is the second largest economy in Latin America after Brazil that may deliver important contributions to regional economic cooperation within such arrangements as CELAC. There is of course also the political alignment and solidarity between the leaders of these countries with Brazil.

In terms of the connection to the BRICS bloc, Mexico was among the first economies in the world to participate in the BRICS+ outreach in 2017 (the first year of the BRICS+ initiative). Uruguay was admitted to the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) in 2021, but the country’s accession to the Bank is still not complete pending the approval of the accession by the country’s legislature. According to Uruguay’s President Yamandu Orsi, accession to the New Development Bank ““has nothing to do with joining” the BRICS and … “Uruguay is not in it and will not be in it””. Colombia has not been engaged as much as some of the other South American economies in BRICS+ meetings, but starting from 2024 has indicated interest in building ties with the bloc.

The list of developing economies to be invited to the BRICS/BRICS+ meetings this year will likely further expand as we approach the July 2025 BRICS summit. This year is likely to feature the first participation of the new members of the BRICS partnership belt in the annual meetings of the BRICS/BRICS+ summit. Apart from individual economies there may be also regional organizations and regional integration arrangements that could be invited to the BRICS+ meetings. There may also be scope this year to explore the BRICS outreach meetings to include global organizations such as the WTO or the IMF.

The BRICS+ format conducted by Brazil in 2025 will be the fourth consecutive such outreach exercise since China relaunched this format in 2022. This should allow for greater continuity in the annual cycles of the BRICS+ meetings that have already served the bloc well in terms of laying the foundation for core membership expansion as well as the widening of the BRICS partnership belt. Most importantly, however, the BRICS+ format offers the possibility to experiment not only with the array of invited countries but also the possible modalities of economic cooperation and summit formats. There is still much scope for the economic and business events in the BRICS/BRICS+ meetings to be taken to a higher level, perhaps through holding meetings between the representatives of leading corporates across BRICS countries as well as the coordination meetings between the representatives of the regional blocs of the Global South.

Yaroslav Lissovolik is Founder of BRICS+ Analytics.