Several posts online have claimed that world leaders fell ill after eating Indian food at the BRICS summit in India. A post on the r/asksg subreddit on 17 September 2026 named Chinese President Xi Jinping among those affected. The same day, Polymarket posted on X that multiple leaders had reportedly been taken ill after attending the summit, a post that had been viewed more than 18 million times at the time of writing. The Instagram account @startupbroclassic then shared the claim on 18 September, drawing on Polymarket’s post.
The 18th BRICS summit took place in New Delhi on 12 and 13 September 2026, with leaders including Xi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in attendance, according to Geo News. The rumours appear to have been triggered by a single confirmed case. On 16 September, the South African Presidency announced that Ramaphosa, 73, who returned from India on 14 September, had been advised by his medical team to rest and recover and was booked off from public engagements. Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said the president had returned from the summit and was not feeling well, but the Presidency did not disclose the nature of his illness. Nothing in its statement suggests that he has a gastrointestinal illness or that his condition is linked to food served at the summit.
Claims about Xi trace back to a post on X on 16 September by Wanjun Xie, chairman of the China Democracy Party, an unregistered Chinese opposition group, who alleged that Xi had fainted at the summit, cut short his visit and been taken to Beijing’s 301 Hospital, and later claimed that he had suffered a stroke, as Business Today reported. IBTimes UK noted that no medical records or other evidence were provided, and that China has made no announcement of a stroke or hospitalisation. Chinese official records instead state that Xi attended the summit’s second session on the morning of 13 September, delivered a statement and returned to Beijing that evening, which is consistent with the summit’s announced 12 to 13 September schedule.
There is one caveat. Xi did skip the gala dinner hosted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the summit, and Modi was filmed pausing mid-speech to ask whether everything was fine with the Chinese delegation, an exchange that Chinese journalists attributed to a faulty translation earpiece. According to Seoul Economic Daily’s account of a Wall Street Journal report, several people familiar with the matter said that Xi withdrew from the dinner because he was not feeling well, although neither Chinese nor Indian officials have attributed his absence to a health issue, and the Journal said there is no evidence for the stroke rumours online. Feeling unwell is not the same as falling ill from Indian food, and skipping the dinner does not rule out the food angle either: Xi could have eaten Indian food elsewhere during his visit, so his absence from that one meal does not by itself address whether food made him unwell.
On 17 September, the fact-checking unit of India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) debunked the rumours on its official X account, labelling the claims misleading and cautioning against malicious posts. It shared screenshots of the numerous posts claiming that the world leaders had fallen sick and labelled them as misleading. As the host government, the MEA is not a neutral party, so this fact-check relies instead on the South African Presidency’s statement and Chinese official records. We also could not find any legitimate news websites reporting that multiple leaders had fallen ill at the summit.
In summary, only Ramaphosa’s illness has been officially confirmed, and his office has neither disclosed his condition nor linked it to food at the summit. The claims about Xi rest on an unverified post by a political dissident, even if he reportedly skipped a dinner because he felt unwell. No government has reported that multiple leaders fell ill, and there is no evidence that any leader was sickened by Indian food. Therefore, we rate this claim as likely false.
