Quad foreign ministers to meet in New Delhi as Indo-Pacific tensions rise

The foreign ministers of the United States, Japan, Australia and India will gather in New Delhi on May 26, a meeting designed to show whether the Quad can keep turning crisis-born coordination into durable Indo-Pacific strategy. Japan’s Toshimitsu Motegi will spend three days in India to attend, while U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to India from May 23 to May 26 after NATO foreign ministers’ talks in Sweden.

The summit will be watched less for symbolism than for substance. The State Department describes the Quad as a diplomatic partnership committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific, but the grouping’s relevance now rests on whether its members can coordinate practical work on China, maritime security, supply chains and technology without pretending they are a formal alliance. The New Delhi meeting will be another test of that balance. India’s Ministry of External Affairs said the ministers are expected to deliver press statements at Hyderabad House, underscoring that this will be a visible public event as well as a diplomatic consultation.

The Quad’s own origin story still shapes the way the group presents itself. The State Department traces its cooperation to the response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, which killed more than 225,000 people across 14 countries. That disaster-response foundation has since widened into a broader agenda that includes maritime and transnational security, economic prosperity and security, critical and emerging technologies, and humanitarian assistance and emergency response. Those are not abstract talking points. They are the areas where the four governments can most plausibly deliver shared benefits across the Indo-Pacific.

The forum’s recent history suggests it has already moved beyond ad hoc coordination. The Quad foreign ministers’ meeting in Washington on July 1, 2025, was the 10th foreign-ministers-level meeting, and the ministers reaffirmed cooperation in the four priority areas. At the 2024 Quad leaders summit, the four governments said the bloc “is here to stay,” while pledging to regularize Quad activities. They also noted that the four countries together represent nearly two billion people and more than one-third of global GDP. That scale gives the grouping weight, but not automatic unity.

The limits are just as important as the ambitions. The Quad can align on protecting sea lanes, diversifying supply chains and advancing critical technologies, yet the members still approach regional security from different national interests and political pressures. The planned first-ever Quad-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission, announced at the 2024 summit and slated for 2025, showed how the forum is edging toward operational cooperation. The New Delhi meeting will now ask a harder question: whether the Quad can keep building habits of action without becoming rigid, and whether it can stay useful precisely because it remains flexible.