As the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation gears up to mark its 25th anniversary with a Council of Heads of State summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, later this September, Nepal finds itself approaching the gathering under a markedly different government than the one that represented it at last year’s summit, a shift that adds a new layer of uncertainty to how, and at what level, Nepal will engage with the bloc this time around.
A summit still taking shape
Kyrgyzstan assumed the SCO’s rotating chairmanship after the 2025 Tianjin summit, adopting the motto “25 Years of the SCO: Together for Sustainable Peace, Development and Prosperity.” Bishkek is expected to host the Council of Heads of State meeting in September 2026, though the exact dates have not yet been formally announced by the Secretariat, contrary to some earlier reports that had pencilled in August 31–September 1.
Preparatory work has been underway for months. The Council of National Coordinators met in Beijing in late January, defence ministers from nine member states finalised a 2026–2027 cooperation roadmap in April, and a “Civilisations Dialogue” cultural forum was convened in Bishkek in mid-July. Kyrgyz officials have repeatedly framed their chairmanship around a shift from the SCO being an “organisation of agreements” to one of “implementation,” with proposals reportedly on the table for a dedicated centre to counter new threats and challenges, alongside a push, long championed by Bishkek, for an SCO Development Bank and investment fund.
Notably, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has indicated that the SCO plans to consolidate its outer ring of engagement: the current 15 dialogue partners and two observer states would be merged into a single “partner” category ahead of the Bishkek summit. If confirmed, this would directly affect Nepal’s formal standing within the organisation.
Nepal’s standing: Dialogue partner, not member
In the past, Nepal has held SCO Dialogue Partner status since 2015, formalised through a memorandum signed in Beijing in March 2016. It shares this tier with 14 other countries, including Turkey, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and, most recently, Laos. The SCO’s ten full members, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Belarus, retain the organisation’s decision-making authority; dialogue partners like Nepal participate in a consultative, not decision-making, capacity.
Nepal has for several years pushed to be elevated to observer or full member status, arguing this would guarantee its presence at every summit and give it direct diplomatic access to the bloc’s major powers. That aspiration was reiterated by then-Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli when he attended the 2025 Tianjin summit, where he addressed the “SCO Plus” session and called for a shift from isolation to connectivity and from confrontation to consultation among member states. The upgrade, however, has not materialised, and geopolitical sensitivities among existing members are widely seen as the main obstacle.
A new government in Nepal
The political backdrop to Nepal’s SCO engagement has changed dramatically since Tianjin. The Gen Z-led protests of September 2025 brought down the UML-Nepali Congress-led Oli government, and the country subsequently held general elections in March 2026 that delivered a landslide to the Rastriya Swatantra Party under Rabi Lamichane and Balendra Shah “Balen”, the former Kathmandu mayor turned prime minister. Shah, sworn in as Nepal’s youngest-ever head of government, now leads a cabinet that has only recently marked its first hundred days in office, with a stated focus on trimming the size of government and delivering on reformist campaign pledges.
This transition means Nepal’s SCO posture for Bishkek will be shaped by an administration with a very different political character than its predecessor, one built on an anti-establishment mandate rather than the traditional party alliances that previously managed Nepal’s foreign policy portfolios. Whether Prime Minister Saha personally attends Bishkek, or whether Nepal is represented at a ministerial level, has not yet been publicly known, and will likely depend on the final invitation list the SCO Secretariat circulates to dialogue partners, as per its usual practice of sharing a “Plan of Main Events.”
What’s at stake for Nepal
Regardless of the level of representation, I think Nepal’s approach should remain pragmatic rather than symbolic, treating SCO engagement as a channel for economic diplomacy rather than a signal of geopolitical alignment. The SCO’s cooperation framework with Nepal already spans trade, transit, investment, transport, energy, agriculture, disaster management, science and technology, tourism and education.
Five broad interests should frame Nepal’s engagement if it participates:
Economic diplomacy — deepening trade linkages with Central Asian economies and courting investment in hydropower, tourism, ICT and agriculture, while diversifying export destinations beyond traditional markets.
Regional connectivity — positioning Nepal as a bridge between South and Central Asia, and exploring feasible multimodal transport and cross-border logistics links, even though large infrastructure commitments through a body where Nepal has no voting power remain unlikely in the near term.
Energy cooperation — Nepal’s substantial hydropower potential remains its strongest card for attracting technology transfer and investment partnerships, alongside discussions on regional electricity trade.
Security cooperation — dialogue on terrorism, cybercrime, organised crime and disaster response, calibrated carefully to avoid compromising Nepal’s constitutionally rooted non-aligned foreign policy.
Strategic balance — maintaining equilibrium in ties with China, India, Russia and the Central Asian republics without appearing to tilt toward any bloc, a posture Nepal has historically guarded closely given its geographic position between two larger neighbours.
Preparation across four fronts
I see that, if Nepal choose to send a high-level delegation, preparation would need to happen simultaneously on diplomatic, economic, political and business fronts. On the diplomatic side, this would mean finalising bilateral meeting schedules with counterparts likely to be present, China, Russia, India, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan among them, alongside issue-specific briefing papers coordinated across the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Finance, Energy and Industry within the country.
Economically, Nepal would benefit from arriving with an investment-ready project portfolio: hydropower schemes, transmission infrastructure, industrial parks, special economic zones, dry ports, tourism facilities and digital connectivity projects that could be pitched directly to potential investors on the sidelines.
Politically, a consistent national position is expected to underpin any Nepali statement at the summit: support for multipolar cooperation, adherence to the UN Charter, non-participation in military alliances, and an emphasis on peaceful regional cooperation, messaging largely consistent with Nepal’s post-1990s non-aligned foreign policy tradition regardless of which government is in power.
On the business side, participation from apex bodies such as the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI), the Confederation of Nepalese Industries (CNI), the Nepal Chamber of Commerce, and the Investment Board Nepal could help translate summit visibility into concrete business-to-business engagement.
Realistic outcomes
Given Nepal’s dialogue-partner status, expectations for Bishkek should be calibrated accordingly. Realistic outcomes include greater political visibility in the Eurasian space, fresh bilateral meetings with major regional powers, exploratory investment conversations in infrastructure and energy, tourism promotion, and expanded cooperation on disaster management and digital technology. Binding financial commitments are unlikely, since decision-making authority rests solely with full members.
Nepal’s likely talking points would be sustainable Himalayan development, glacier and mountain ecosystem protection, hydropower investment, cross-border connectivity, digital economy growth, tourism recovery, food security, disaster resilience and youth exchanges, which align closely with the cooperation areas already covered under its SCO partnership framework.
Headwinds facing the summit
The Bishkek summit itself will not be immune to the structural tensions that have periodically complicated SCO consensus-building: India-Pakistan friction, China-India strategic competition, Russia-West sanctions disputes, and Iran-related Middle East tensions have all, at various points, made it harder for the grouping to move beyond broad declarations. Kyrgyzstan’s chairmanship has explicitly sought to counter this by pushing an implementation-focused agenda, though translating declarations into action has long been the SCO’s central institutional weakness. There is no indication of any organised effort within the bloc to specifically undermine China at Bishkek, though differences over regional security priorities and connectivity initiatives may be considered likely, consistent with the SCO’s pattern of managing disagreement through negotiation rather than open rupture.
For Nepal, the recommended posture should remain a development-first, strictly non-aligned approach: prioritising economic cooperation over geopolitical positioning, and presenting itself as a stable, reliable partner invested in regional peace and sustainable development — a strategy consistent with Nepal’s long-standing foreign policy principles, and one that offers the clearest path to turning summit participation into tangible national benefit, whoever leads the delegation to Bishkek.
