Xi and Putin were far from the only heads of state making their way out of Delhi as the summit closed. The 18th BRICS Summit had drawn one of its largest-ever leader turnouts, including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed, alongside ministerial delegations from Brazil and Saudi Arabia.

PM Modi held 15 sit-down meetings with heads of state or heads of government in the last three days on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit.

Apart from the formal bilateral meetings, PM Modi held pull-aside conversations with other visiting leaders and representatives of international institutions.

Rounding out Modi's Saturday bilaterals was a meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart, continuing a relationship Modi has nurtured through previous engagements, including talks on the sidelines of last year's UNGA summit in New York.

With the New Delhi summit concluded, Modi formally passed the BRICS chairship to China for 2027, extending what he described as best wishes and expressing confidence that the incoming presidency would build on this year's momentum. In brief closing remarks, Modi said the world now expects concrete results from BRICS, capping a summit that combined lofty institutional ambition with the granular, overnight diplomacy needed to hold an increasingly diverse bloc together.