ISLAMABAD — Pakistan announced on Tuesday that it will host the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in August 2027, as the three-day meeting of the SCO Council of National Coordinators concluded in Islamabad, the first major event of Pakistan’s 2026-27 chairmanship of the grouping.
The coordinators’ meeting, chaired by Pakistan’s National Coordinator Dr M. Faisal, ran from September 28 to September 30 and set the programme of activities for Pakistan’s year-long chairmanship under the theme “Turning Vision into Action: Connectivity, Innovation and Shared Prosperity.”
The meeting drew an Indian delegation led by Alok Dimri, Additional Secretary in India’s Ministry of External Affairs — the first official Indian visit to Pakistan in nearly two years, coming roughly a year and a half after Operation Sindoor, the May 2025 military confrontation between the two countries following the Pahalgam attack.
The visit also came days after India and Pakistan sparred over terrorism and Kashmir at the UN General Assembly, where External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif traded allegations in their national addresses, and diplomats exercised rights of reply on the global stage.
India’s stated position remains that bilateral engagement requires an environment free of terrorism, but New Delhi has continued to engage with Pakistan within multilateral formats such as the SCO. Indian officials have travelled to Pakistan for SCO events before, including Jaishankar’s October 2024 visit to Islamabad, the first by an Indian foreign minister in almost nine years.
Pakistan assumed the chairmanship of the SCO Council of Heads of State for 2026-27 from Kyrgyzstan at the Bishkek summit on September 1, which Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif attended. Under its chairmanship, Pakistan says it will focus on regional connectivity, innovation, economic cooperation and people-to-people contacts.