The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Council of Heads of State and the SCO Plus session met in Bishkek on Tuesday, closing a summit that ran from 31 August under the chairmanship of Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov (Dawn; Azernews).
Who was in the room
Dawn reports that leaders from China, Russia, India, Iran and Türkiye attended. Among those listed ahead of the summit as due to take part were Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, alongside Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif.
A note on that list: the roll of attendees was published as an expected line-up before the session. Dawn confirms the five delegations named above; we have not independently confirmed each individual leader’s presence in the hall.
Why this summit mattered
The SCO now spans most of continental Asia by population, and this session convened while two of its members — Iran and, indirectly, the wider Gulf — are in the middle of an active confrontation with the United States. President Pezeshkian used the venue to say Tehran would reciprocate immediately if Washington honoured the June interim deal, while Iran’s armed forces were simultaneously warning of a “much heavier” response to any fresh American strike.
Pakistan’s foreign minister Ishaq Dar met his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi on the sidelines, pressing for implementation of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding.
What changed at the close
Pakistan assumed the chairmanship of the Council of Heads of State for 2026-27 and will host next year’s summit in Islamabad, under the theme “Turning vision into action, connectivity, innovation and shared prosperity”.
That hands Islamabad the agenda-setting role for a year — and, in due course, the question of hosting an Indian prime minister at a moment when the two governments are publicly at odds over the Indus Waters Treaty.
[Image: the SCO Council of Heads of State meeting in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan on 1 September 2026. Via Dawn.]
