Leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), together with Chinese language President Xi Jinping, his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are set to assemble in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek for an annual summit.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian can also be attending the summit, which marks 25 years of its existence.
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The 2-day summit, beginning on Monday, comes at a time when the world is grappling with the aftermath of the US-Israel warfare on Iran, which has upended international vitality and monetary markets, and the continuing Russia-Ukraine warfare.
So, what would be the foremost agenda of the summit, and can the SCO leaders attempt to use the gathering to push for a multipolar world and International South cooperation on commerce and safety points, as United States President Donald Trump’s unilateral international coverage has eroded the worldwide rules-based order?
Right here’s what we all know:
Who’s attending the SCO summit and the place is it being held?
This 12 months’s summit is happening in Bishkek beneath the motto: Collectively for Sustainable Peace, Growth and Prosperity.
Xi, Putin and Modi will probably be joined by the Iranian president and leaders of Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, amongst others.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, United Nations Secretary-Basic Antonio Guterres and the Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretary-Basic Kao Kim Hourn are additionally anticipated to attend the summit.
William Yang, senior analyst for Northeast Asia on the Worldwide Disaster Group, famous that the continuing wars are placing extra pressure on the rules-based worldwide order, and in opposition to this backdrop, the summit serves as an vital event for a number of of the world’s rising nice powers, together with China and India, to raise their international affect and deepen their engagement and cooperation with different international locations within the International South.
“For years, SCO has been seen as one of many avenues for China to advertise the multipolar world order and kind its personal bloc with different growing international locations. Regardless of its slim scope of cooperation originally, SCO member states have sought to increase the scope of their mandate and the variety of member states,” Yang instructed Al Jazeera.
Amid the continuing conflicts within the Center East and Europe, Yang stated, “China may use this 12 months’s summit to current itself as a terrific energy that advocates for a peaceable decision of the conflicts, thereby sharpening the distinction with the US.”
“Nonetheless, these efforts are prone to be restricted to rhetoric relatively than any substantive proposal for battle decision,” he stated.
Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at French funding financial institution Natixis, stated the summit is especially important as a result of it marks the grouping’s twenty fifth anniversary and presents the primary probability to show final 12 months’s Tianjin technique, which known as for a multipolar world order that fosters mutually useful worldwide cooperation, into motion. Final 12 months’s summit passed off in China’s Tianjin area.
“Placing Modi, Putin and Xi in the identical room, with India-China border talks nonetheless stay and a scheduled Modi-Putin bilateral, is a visual check of how far the latest thaw goes and the way Eurasia needs to organise safety, connectivity and commerce with out defaulting to Western establishments,” she instructed Al Jazeera, referring to the latest India-China talks amid the warming up of New Delhi-Beijing ties.
What’s the SCO?
The SCO started in 1996 as a safety bloc, dubbed the “Shanghai 5”. It was shaped by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to settle their border disputes following the top of the Chilly Conflict and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
However in June 2001, the grouping advanced into the SCO, and expanded to incorporate Uzbekistan, with headquarters in Beijing. In 2017, the bloc expanded to incorporate India and Pakistan. Iran and Belarus have been additionally added as full members in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
As well as, the organisation has 14 key dialogue companions, together with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Turkiye, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Cambodia.
SCO member states account for 43 p.c of the world’s inhabitants and 23 p.c – or nearly 1 / 4 – of the worldwide financial system.
Analysts have identified that whereas the SCO emerged with a give attention to regional safety, the enlargement of its mandate to incorporate commerce and different International South considerations means it’s obscure what units the grouping aside from different International South organisations just like the BRICS, which is an acronym derived from the initials of the founding member international locations, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Alejandro Reyes, adjunct professor within the division of politics and public administration on the College of Hong Kong, stated the SCO has grown right into a “counterbalance” to the US-led Asia Pacific alliance aimed toward countering China’s rise. India is a part of each groupings. “Curiously, India is a part of the SCO, and the US seems to have dropped the Indo-Pacific nomenclature,” he stated.
Reyes emphasised that “the SCO just isn’t a coherent anti-US, anti-Western alliance”. “It’s higher understood as a discussion board through which international locations with very totally different pursuits can show that they’ve options and strategic room for manoeuvre – company on this extra unstable geopolitical order, dominated by China and the US. It’s much less an anti-American alliance than a venue for international locations hedging in opposition to and hinging away from American energy,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
“The importance this 12 months is that present US insurance policies, particularly with regard to Iran and persevering with US tariff and sanctions motion, could also be making that hedging extra engaging and obligatory,” he added.
What’s on this 12 months’s agenda?
The US-Israel warfare on Iran, the Russia-Ukraine warfare and the financial and social state of affairs in Afghanistan are key points leaders are anticipated to debate this 12 months, in accordance with the SCO Secretariat.
Relations between India and China – Asia’s two main economies – are additionally anticipated to be mentioned. Final 12 months, Beijing and New Delhi started a rapprochement after 5 years of tensions over a 2020 lethal border skirmish. Trump’s tariff warfare on Indian items final 12 months compelled New Delhi to fix ties with Beijing. For the primary time since 2018, Modi visited China final 12 months for the SCO summit.
Border tensions between India and Pakistan additionally persist, and the problem is anticipated to be mentioned at this summit.
Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of Bengaluru-based assume tank Takshashila Establishment’s Geostrategy Programme, instructed Al Jazeera that aside from the normal safety agenda, this 12 months’s summit would possibly embody any ahead motion on problems with financial integration or monetary cooperation structure.
“In Tianjin, we had the settlement on establishing the SCO Growth Financial institution,” Kewalramani stated.
“The Kyrgyz management has stated that its precedence will probably be to maneuver the needle on the financial institution, the SCO Growth Fund and SCO Funding Fund,” he stated, including that whereas talks have reportedly been happening on this path, there isn’t any readability on whether or not any agreements will probably be introduced at this 12 months’s summit.
In line with the SCO Secretariat, financial connectivity will probably be a key subject the group will talk about because the US and Israel’s warfare on Iran continues to paralyse key maritime routes just like the Strait of Hormuz, which has upended international provide chains, the vitality market and monetary markets.
The group is anticipated to debate new commerce and transport corridors, such because the 7,200km (4,474-mile) Worldwide North-South Transport Hall, which hyperlinks the Russian port metropolis of St Petersburg with India’s monetary capital, Mumbai, via Iran and ports on the Gulf.
Herrero identified that with Modi and Putin scheduled to carry a bilateral assembly, discussions on the Northern Sea Route, which runs via the Arctic coast, are additionally anticipated. China final month introduced a brand new transport route via the Arctic Ocean, aimed toward easing international commerce amid the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and assaults within the Bab al-Mandeb within the Purple Sea, which is able to move via the Northern Sea Route.
In line with Indian media reviews, Moscow and New Delhi may negotiate using the Northern Sea Route by India because the disaster in West Asia continues to have an effect on commerce routes.
The SCO will even search to ascertain a community of Silk Highway stations to assist worldwide freight site visitors throughout Eurasia.
Can the SCO agree on all points?
The Eurasian grouping has usually been unable to agree on international geopolitical points.
For example, Russia has been capable of get most SCO members to align with its pursuits in terms of its warfare in Ukraine, however India has tried to play a extra balanced position – searching for peace and stronger ties with Ukraine, whereas additionally shopping for file ranges of oil from Russia.
However this 12 months, Ukraine is anticipated to function in discussions, with Turkiye’s Erdogan and Russia’s Putin holding bilateral talks on the matter, in accordance with a Kremlin aide. Europe’s deadliest warfare since World Conflict II is in its fifth 12 months.
Yury Ushakov, Putin’s international coverage adviser, stated the assembly would happen on the sidelines of the SCO summit.
“There are numerous points to debate. In fact, these embody the state of affairs within the Black Sea and the Ukraine difficulty on the whole,” he instructed reporters, referring to the rise in assaults within the Black Sea.
The SCO has, nevertheless, taken a extra collective place on the US-Israel warfare on Iran and Israel’s genocidal actions in Palestine.
In March, the SCO condemned the US-Israel warfare on Iran. “The SCO member states thought-about using power as unacceptable and advocate for the decision of present variations completely by peaceable means, primarily based on dialogue, mutual respect, and taking into consideration the professional pursuits of all events, in accordance with the norms of worldwide regulation and the rules of the UN Constitution,” it stated in a press release.
India, which has sturdy ties with Israel, had refused to endorse an SCO joint assertion condemning Israel for its assault on Iran in June 2025.
Iranian President Pezeshkian can also be scheduled to fulfill Putin on the sidelines of the summit, in accordance with Iran’s official IRNA information company. Russia is an in depth ally of Iran and the 2 international locations cooperate on defence points. China has emerged as Iran’s greatest financial lifeline because it buys greater than 80 p.c of its crude oil. Moscow and Beijing have additionally lent diplomatic cowl to Tehran on the UN.
Frictions additionally exist on how the group views border tensions between India and Pakistan. New Delhi has repeatedly known as on the organisation to sentence “cross-border terrorism”, for which it blames Islamabad, an in depth financial and defence ally of China.
Final July, India demanded that the grouping condemn the April 2025 attack by armed men in Indian-administered Kashmir, through which 26 folks have been killed. Pakistan has additionally blamed India for armed assaults inside its territory.
Throughout the Tianjin summit, the bloc condemned “terror” assaults in each India and Pakistan, taking a extra balanced place on the problem.
What are Russia, China and India going to achieve on the summit?
Reyes from the College of Hong Kong identified that every one eyes will even be on Russia, China and India.
“For China, the SCO is partly about institution-building. Beijing needs to show that it might convene a big a part of Eurasia round an agenda of safety, connectivity, commerce and improvement, whereas selling a extra multipolar, agentic worldwide order. It additionally reinforces China’s more and more vital financial place in Central Asia, a strategically key area of the Eurasia landmass,” he stated.
“For Russia, the summit is a chance to indicate that it’s not remoted internationally. Sustaining sturdy relationships with China, India, Iran and Central Asia is economically and diplomatically vital, given the Ukraine warfare and Western and different sanctions. However Moscow additionally has an curiosity in preserving its personal affect in Eurasia relatively than merely turning into increasingly more depending on China.
“India is in an intriguing place. Modi’s participation just isn’t a sign that India is becoming a member of the China-Russia axis, corresponding to it’s. India itself describes its SCO priorities as ‘safety, connectivity and alternative’. That’s way more in keeping with India’s longstanding pursuit of strategic autonomy – its company amid the great-power rivalry,” Reyes defined.
He added that New Delhi needs “entry and affect in Central Asia, continued relations with Russia [from which it buys the bulk of its defence equipment], and a mechanism for managing its troublesome however steadily stabilising relationship with China”.
“On the similar time, New Delhi maintains vital relations with Washington, together with via the Quad safety association.
“So China and Russia might even see the SCO partly as an instrument for constructing a much less US-dominated worldwide order. India, in the meantime, sees it extra as one in all a number of overlapping platforms via which it might maximise its personal company.”
What does all this imply to the US?
As a part of his unilateral international coverage imaginative and prescient, Trump has undermined the Western-led worldwide order and lashed out at International South blocs, corresponding to BRICS, which he sees as a risk to the US’s financial dominance. He has known as the grouping “anti-American”.
Nonetheless, Kewalramani famous that the Trump administration has continued a few of its predecessors’ approaches and deepened engagement with international locations within the area the place this 12 months’s SCO is being hosted, particularly with the C5 or Central Asian international locations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
“Joe Biden had established a leader-level assembly mechanism with C5 international locations in 2023. Trump additionally hosted them in DC in November 2025. [US Secretary of State] Marco Rubio and subsequently Trump are anticipated to go to the area later [this] 12 months. Kazakhstan has introduced accession to the Abraham Accords, turning into the primary Central Asian state to affix [the Trump-led diplomatic efforts to cajole Muslim countries to recognise Israel]. The US has been engaged with the area on essential minerals and different enterprise offers,” he stated.
“In different phrases, C5 members are additionally adopting a diversified diplomatic strategy, searching for to steadiness China and Russia’s dominance,” he famous.
“However the truth that you’re witnessing these international locations assembly with way more function to consider various monetary and vitality architectures is a mirrored image of the constraints of the US’s disruptive international coverage,” Kewalramani added.
Herrero stated for the US, the SCO summit is a reminder that international locations like India will hold practising strategic autonomy: it is going to sit within the Quad and purchase US defence gear whereas additionally speaking to Moscow and Beijing in a China-heavy discussion board.
The Quad or Quadrilateral Safety Dialogue was established by India, Japan, Australia and the US in 2007 to counter China’s rising affect within the Asia Pacific area. Over the previous quarter-century, India has grown nearer to the US and its allies, amid shared considerations over Beijing’s rise.
Reyes warned that Washington ought to be cautious to not learn the SCO as a consolidated anti-US coalition, regardless that China, Russia and Iran are members.
“The variations amongst China, Russia and India are far too substantial to substantiate that label. The extra vital message is that American financial and geopolitical stress can typically produce convergence amongst international locations that in any other case would possibly disagree with each other extra,” he stated.
“The SCO’s criticism of unilateral financial measures is critical in that respect. China and Russia explicitly need a much less US-dominated worldwide order. India doesn’t essentially share that goal, but it surely does need a world through which Washington can’t dictate its foreign-policy selections.”
