Photo: Benoit Tessier/POOL/AFP/Getty Images
Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) will convene in Évian-les-Bains on June 15–17, 2026, at a time of great geopolitical and economic disruption. This will be the first multilateral leaders’ meeting of this elite club of advanced industrialized democracies since the start of U.S. and Israeli military action on Iran and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. The war in Ukraine will also remain at the top of the agenda. The G7 leaders will seek to coordinate policies on AI—including EU regulations on the environmental and energy impact of data centers and the United States’ exporting of the American AI stack—as well as on securing critical minerals supply chains.
In one sense, this year’s G7 meeting represents a “back to the future” moment, bringing leaders together to coordinate macroeconomic policies in response to the disruption of oil supplies. The G7 meeting of financial ministers was first convened in 1973 in response to the first oil shock. Today, the G7 agenda has expanded dramatically to address broader global governance issues, including AI, development assistance, and managing China’s rise.
The expanded agenda of the G7 begs the question: Is the G7 fit for purpose? Today, G7 countries represent an ever-decreasing fraction of the global population and global economy compared with the time of its formation in the 1970s. These trends cast doubt on whether this exclusive club of nations has the capabilities to address the broad range of global problems it has identified. The CSIS Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department’s project on global governance has collected data on which countries in the G7—as well as which ones outside of it—are high performers, in an effort to gauge their ability to accomplish the group’s goals.
In 1980, the G7 accounted for 60.5 percent of world GDP and 13.8 percent of the world’s population. Today, it accounts for 44.1 percent of world GDP and 9.6 percent of the global population. The G7 agenda, however, has globalized even as the bloc’s share of the world has shrunk.
CSIS scraped G7 leaders’ statements from 2018 to 2024 to determine the priority list of global issues, weighted for the frequency of specific terms (there was no collective G7 leaders’ statement in 2025 due to policy differences). Table 1 shows the top nine priorities ranked by growth in frequency of use in leaders’ statements.
Cross-country performance in seven of these nine priorities can be measured using publicly available metrics. (The Indo-Pacific and disarmament and nonproliferation issues have no available performance metrics and are therefore excluded from the rankings that follow).
We used a database of 347 performance metrics across the seven priority issue areas to create an aggregate weighted ranking (weighted proportionally for the number of available performance rankings). Among the group’s seven members, the top three performers overall are Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
These comparative performance metrics allow CSIS to identify high-performing countries on the global governance issues that can enhance the G7’s capabilities in accomplishing its mission. The United States ranks strongly on Ukraine and digital science and technology, for example. Germany is one of the highest performers on climate and economic resilience. France and Japan rank highest among G7 members on food security. The United Kingdom and Canada top the list on education and labor issues (see Figure 2).
Across all global governance issues identified as priorities by the G7 leaders’ statements, the overall performance of Australia and South Korea compare favorably to that of G7 members (see Table 3). Australia, for example, outperforms all G7 countries except the United States on issues of global economy, finance, and sustainable development; ranks ahead of all G7 members except Germany and the United Kingdom on economic resilience; and outperforms all except Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada on labor and education. South Korea also outperforms Italy across all global governance issues. On digital science and technology, South Korea ranks second only to the United States.
The matrix below shows all nine countries’ average rank in each of the seven measurable issue areas.
While expanded membership is not on the agenda at Évian-les-Bains, future G7 hosts should seriously consider an expanded “G9” formula to increase the effectiveness of the group on the issues it cares about. Specifically, two countries—Australia and South Korea—are strong candidates for inclusion in a G9 configuration.
South Korea and Australia’s highly rated performance alongside G7 countries is in part reflected in the proactive role both have played on global governance issues. For example, South Korea recently hosted a massive AI summit, positioning itself as a central global hub of AI innovation and infrastructure. Australia has been an active leader on climate action, development transparency, and digital safety norms.
It is also noteworthy that other notable geopolitical actors, while important liaison partners of the G7 club, measure up less well in terms of performance. India and Brazil, for example, do not compare favorably to G7 members on the list of high-priority issues. They both ranked below the lowest performing G7 member on every issue area except for climate (where both rank only below Germany, the United Kingdom, and France as high performers).
Victor Cha is president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.
