India and France: from a Strategic Partnership to a Special Global Strategic Partnership

Background

India and France established diplomatic relations soon after India's independence in 1947. Launched on 26 January 1998, the Strategic Partnership with France was the first-ever for India with a Western nation, and the first for France with a non-Western nation. Defence and security, civil nuclear matters and space constitute the principal pillars of this strategic cooperation. In 2023 the two sides adopted the Horizon 2047 Roadmap, and in February 2026 the relationship was elevated to the level of a Special Global Strategic Partnership. In defence, the P-75 Scorpene Project saw the last and the sixth submarine commissioned in the Indian Navy in January 2025, the delivery of 36 Rafale aircrafts by France to India was completed in 2022, and on 28 April 2025 the two governments signed an Inter-Governmental Agreement for the procurement of 26 Rafale-M aircrafts for the Indian Navy. In space, ISRO and the French agency CNES have cooperated for over fifty years and have concluded an agreement for cooperation in the joint earth observation mission TRISHNA. Within the European Union, France is India's third-largest trading partner, after the Netherlands and Germany, and bilateral trade has more than doubled in the last decade to Euros 13.6 billion in 2025-26.