When world leaders gathered in New Delhi for the G20 Summit in September 2023, the spectacle surrounding the event was impossible to miss. Under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the summit was celebrated as India’s grand arrival on the global stage. Streets were lined with banners, cultural motifs saturated the summit’s visual landscape, and official messaging projected India as the “voice of the Global South”.Three years later, India is preparing to host the 2026 summit of BRICS, but there is a palpable contrast. Unlike the build-up to the G20, there is little of the expansive public mobilisation, symbolic messaging, or political fanfare that characterised 2023. Meanwhile, uncertainty continues to surround the summit-level meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, commonly known as the “Quad,” which was expected to take place in India this year.At the same time, New Delhi has stepped back from hosting the 33rd Conference of Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2028, despite having earlier expressed willingness to do so. These developments suggest a more selective approach to international summitry that is shaped by altered geopolitical circumstances and the limits of reproducing diplomatic spectacle indefinitely.Political theatreIn a recent study, I show how multinational summits function as stages of political theatre. Unlike routine foreign policy, which is conducted through bureaucratic and technocratic channels away from public view, summit meetings place national leaders at the center of highly mediatised global events. Carefully curated public performances through images, speeches, handshakes, and hugs allow leaders to simultaneously project political authority and status before domestic and global audiences.This performative dimension is especially attractive to populist leaders, whose politics rely heavily on spectacle, personalisation, and direct appeals to “the people.” Populism is understood not simply as an ideology, but as a political style enacted through symbolic performances and finely tuned public imagery. International summits amplify these tendencies. They allow populist leaders to embody the nation on the global stage, personalise foreign policy through leader-centric diplomacy, and project themselves as strong representatives of popular will confronting global elites and power hierarchies.Using this framework, my research examined how Modi’s conduct during India’s G20 presidency combined three overlapping registers of populist performance: textual, visual, and participatory. Textually, speeches, slogans, and official messaging framed the world as facing a crisis of multilateralism while presenting India as a civilisational power capable of providing moral direction and stability. Modi also frequently used his personalised Mann ki Baat broadcasts to familiarise citizens with the summit and highlight its supposed benefits for Indian citizens.Visually, the presidency was adorned with the widespread use of G20 branding, the lotus symbol, and Modi’s own image, alongside symbolic gestures such as the Akhand Bharat mural and the use of “Bharat” instead of “India” during the summit. At the participatory level, the summit was promoted as a “People’s Presidency” through the Jan Bhagidari campaign and nationwide outreach initiatives designed to turn diplomacy into a mass public experience. Through these modalities of populist articulation, Modi was able to project India’s growing international prominence and strengthen his domestic political image as the embodiment of popular will.Diminishing returnsIf the G20 demonstrated the political value of global summitry as spectacle, why has that model not been replicated for the upcoming BRICS meeting? And what explains India’s decision to withdraw from hosting COP33 despite showing interest earlier? The answer lies partly in the altered geopolitical environment between 2023 and 2026, but also in the selective logic of populist diplomacy itself.The 2023 G20 Summit represented a fortuitous convergence of factors: a favorable international moment for India, heightened global attention toward New Delhi, and a form of political leadership attuned to spectacle and narrative projection. But such moments are difficult to reproduce indefinitely. Not all international forums lend themselves equally to political performance, and the symbolic returns of summit spectacle tend to diminish with repetition.India occupied a particularly advantageous diplomatic position in 2023. Amid intensifying rivalry between the West and both China and Russia, India was being viewed by major powers as an indispensable partner. Its balancing position on the war in Ukraine, growing strategic relevance in the Indo-Pacific, and claim to represent the concerns of the developing world all elevated its international visibility. That position is harder to maintain today as the international environment has become more fragmented and uncertain.The continuation of the war in Ukraine, a new one in West Asia, and the corresponding rivalries have narrowed the space for the optimistic bridge-building rhetoric that India successfully deployed during its G20 presidency. The language of the Global South, which carried considerable diplomatic resonance in 2023, has also become more diffuse.At the same time, BRICS itself has become more internally heterogeneous following its expansion, with several of its constituent states finding themselves on opposite sides of the fence in the ongoing war in West Asia. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, meanwhile, remains strategically important but is a narrower and more security-oriented grouping, one less suited to expansive public mobilisation or broad civilisational messaging.We also need to take into account that all international forums do not offer the same opportunities for political performance. The G20 was uniquely adaptable to spectacle because of its broad agenda, high visibility, and diverse audience. It enabled the projection of multiple narratives at once: India as a rising power, a civilisational state, and a spokesperson for the developing world. Forums such as BRICS or the Quad operate within narrower strategic confines, while climate negotiations under the UNFCCC impose a different kind of constraint altogether. Climate summits are heavily technical, negotiation-intensive, and tied to measurable commitments. They generate scrutiny as much as symbolism. Hosting such forums carries reputational risks if expectations are not met, making them less conducive to the political projection of the leaders involved.Although New Delhi did not provide a detailed public explanation for abandoning its plans – beyond citing a review of commitments for 2028 – there seems to be a realisation that hosting a COP entails a rise in expectations regarding mitigation commitments, energy transition targets, and climate financing. Such pressures sit uneasily with its long-standing emphasis on equity, climate justice, and domestically determined developmental pathways rather than externally driven benchmarks of climate ambition. By stepping back from summit stewardship, India may be seeking to avoid intense international scrutiny of its continued reliance on coal and its broader developmental priorities.Having said that, India’s withdrawal should not be interpreted as a retreat from climate diplomacy or global environmental governance. In recent years, New Delhi has actively sought to position itself as an agenda-setter and representative voice of the Global South in climate politics through initiatives such as the International Solar Alliance, the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, and its emphasis during the G20 New Delhi Summit 2023 on themes such as sustainable lifestyles and climate justice. The decision to withdraw from hosting COP33, therefore, appears less as a repudiation of climate leadership than a recalibration in order to avoid heightened scrutiny.There is also the logic of diminishing returns at play. Spectacle derives much of its power from novelty and exceptionalism. Attempting to replicate the same intensity around every summit risks diluting its political effect. Overperformance can gradually turn spectacle into routine, blunting its emotional and symbolic resonance.Spectacle or substanceIndia’s recent experiences with summitry offer a useful lens through which to think about the relationship between diplomacy and political performance. International summits have always involved elements of symbolism, image-building, and political theatre.However, the contrast between the spectacle of the 2023 G20 Summit and the quieter politics surrounding subsequent forums highlights that there are limits to turning multilateralism into permanent political theatre. Even though increased public visibility through summitry can help generate attention, legitimacy, and momentum for international initiatives, challenges arise when symbolic projection becomes an end in itself rather than a vehicle for advancing cooperation.As summitry becomes more performative in the age of media-driven populism, the importance of behind-the-scenes diplomacy is likely to grow because technical negotiations, institutional backchannels, and sustained bureaucratic engagement remain the real backbone of international cooperation. Grand spectacles may capture public imagination, but durable diplomacy is still shaped away from the cameras.Abhinandan Kumar is a Doctoral Candidate at the Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.