BRICS is a dialogue forum for countries with developing economies, the emergence of which is due to objective trends in the development of the global world. The BRICS countries share the tasks of building a multipolar world, democratizing international institutions, reforming the global financial architecture, creating conditions for more active participation in global governance, and maintaining the national sovereignty of developing countries. At the XV BRICS summit, which took place in August 2023 in Johannesburg (South Africa), it was announced that BRICS would expand and six new members would join the association, including Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The article discusses different approaches of the BRICS countries to the issue of its expansion; criteria for selecting its new members; prospects and risks of expanding this association. The expansion of BRICS is of great importance for world politics, because it demonstrates the dissatisfaction of developing countries of the global South with the policies of the West and the economic order led by the United States; expands the possibilities of creating a new alternative world order; allows to solve the problem of reforming the global financial architecture and creating alternative financial structures; helps coordinate the actions of oil producing and consuming countries in the context of the transition to alternative energy; guarantees the expansion of markets for their goods; offers the States of the global South an alternative platform for discussing and resolving difficult issues on terms of mutual respect and equality. The expanded BRICS+ is being formed not as an anti-West, but as an alternative project; makes it necessary for the US to reconsider its policy towards this association as a collective actor; creates opportunities for the implementation of the concept of a multipolar world.
BRICS; summit; expansion of the association; multipolar world; international institutions; global governance; alternative world order.