India’s Investment Treaty Landscape in 2026

India’s investment treaty and arbitration framework has changed markedly over the past two decades. Following some  adverse arbitral awards in the mid‑2010s, India terminated around 75 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) in 2016 and 2017 and adopted a markedly more restrictive 2016 Model BIT. In 2026, India appears to be entering a new phase: it is revising the 2016 Model BIT and has concluded or advanced a number of new trade and investment agreements. In this post, we provide a focused 2026 update on India’s treaty landscape and draw out key points that matter for investors and other stakeholders. 

The key takeaways are as follows.

1. A revised Model BIT is under consideration, but its content remains unknown. India has confirmed that revisions are underway to its Model BIT, which will be “more investor-friendly”, but no draft has been released. Recent treaties offer the best available signal of India's possible direction.
2. India's new trade agreements do not confer rights on investors. Across its new trade agreements with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), Oman, UAE and the UK, India has continued to exclude investor-State arbitration, channelling any disputes through State-to-State mechanisms only.
3. New BITs show modest but meaningful improvements over the 2016 Model BIT. The India-Kyrgyzstan and India-Uzbekistan BITs retain the 2016 Model BIT’s restrictive architecture but introduce longer limitation periods of six years (as compared to three years under the 2016 Model BIT), full protection and security obligations, and a clarification that aids enforcement under the New York Convention. As an outlier to the restrictive 2016 Model BIT, the 2024 India–UAE BIT retains investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) while offering some concessions, such as protecting portfolio investments and introducing a three-year expiration period for the mandatory exhaustion of local remedies.

Refreshing India’s 2016 Model BIT

In 2025, India announced that it would “refresh” the 2016 Model BIT and make it “more investor‑friendly”, broadly in line with its 2021 Parliamentary Committee recommendation that the model terms be revisited. On 1 February 2026, India’s Ministry of Finance confirmed that work on the revised Model BIT is underway and that the new text will “reflect[] the balance achieved through extensive negotiations with several countries”. No draft text has yet been made public. Until it is, India’s recent treaties offer an indication of its current policy direction.

India’s new trade and investment agreements

Over the past five years, India has aggressively expanded its network of trade agreements. New trade agreements include: 

• India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) (signed and entered into force in 2022) (previously reported on our Blog here);  
• India-EFTA Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (signed in 2024 and entered into force in 2025);
• India-UK Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (signed in 2025 and expected to enter into force in April 2026) (also previously reported on our Blog here); and
• India-Oman CEPA (signed in 2025 and not yet entered into force); and
• India-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) (signed in 2026 and not yet entered into force) although the Investment Protection Agreement (IPA) is still under negotiation.

India has also concluded negotiations for  its FTA with New Zealand, although this has not yet been signed.

On the investment side, several BITs have recently entered into force or been concluded: 

• India-UAE BIT (signed and entered into force in 2024, replacing the 2013 India‑UAE BIT and accompanying the 2022 India-UAE CEPA);
• India-Kyrgyzstan BIT (signed in 2019 and entered into force in 2025);
• India-Brazil BIT (signed in 2020 and entered into force in 2025);
• India-Uzbekistan BIT (signed in 2024 and entered into force in 2025); and
• India-Israel BIT (signed in 2026 and not yet entered into force (text not yet available).

At least 13 more investment and trade agreements with ASEAN, Australia, Canada, Chile,  the Eurasian Economic Union, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Israel, Maldives, Peru, the Philippines, the US, Qatar, and Sri Lanka are reportedly on the horizon, with India considering or actively negotiating those agreements.

Trends in India’s treaty practice in 2025-2026

Several trends emerge from India’s recent treaty practice.

• First, India’s new trade agreements do not confer rights on investors. India’s agreements with the EFTA, Oman, and the UK, as well as the India-Brazil BIT, establish only State‑to-State obligations and exclude investor-State arbitration. This marks a clear departure from older agreements such as the 2011 India–Japan CEPA and the  2003 ASEAN‑India Framework Agreement, which included investment protections and, in some cases, ISDS. The India–EU FTA/IPA structure is a partial exception: while the FTA does not contain investment protection, a standalone EU-India IPA is envisaged and is expected to include investment protections and an ISDS mechanism.
• Second, the India-Brazil BIT is distinctive. Based on the Brazilian Model BIT, it grants no direct rights to investors, including no right to sue the host State. It creates only State‑to‑State obligations and channels investors’ complaints through designated national Ombudsmen in each State for resolution, with any remaining disputes handled at the inter‑State level.
• Third, the India-UAE BIT is an outlier that balances the 2016 Model BIT with more investor-friendly concessions. While the recent India-UAE BIT retains ISDS, it makes several important adjustments. For example, it explicitly protects portfolio investments (such as shares and bonds), in contrast to the narrower approach of the 2016 Model BIT. It also restricts the period for exhaustion of local remedies to three years before an investor may commence international arbitration (an improvement over the 2016 Model BIT, which did not provide for any time period but merely provided that an investor must exhaust local remedies).
• Fourth, the India-Kyrgyzstan and India-Uzbekistan BITs largely replicate the 2016 Model BIT. They adopt an enterprise‑based definition of “Investment”, require “substantial business activities” in the home State, mandate a five-year exhaustion of local remedies period, and include broad carve‑outs (notably for taxation) without a general fair and equitable treatment standard. They are, however, modestly more favourable in that they add full protection and security for physical assets, extend the limitation period for claims from three years under the 2016 Model BIT to six years, and clarify that investor-State disputes arise out of a “commercial relationship” for New York Convention purposes—language aimed at easing enforcement difficulties across various jurisdictions in light of India’s commercial reservation.

Conclusion 

India's recent treaty activity reflects a State that is recalibrating its approach to ISDS. The forthcoming revision to the 2016 Model BIT, combined with the pattern of recent treaties, suggests that India is willing to offer incrementally more to investors—longer limitation periods, full protection and security, and clearer enforcement pathways—while preserving its core insistence on regulatory sovereignty, mandatory local remedies, and State-to-State dispute resolution in its trade agreements.

For investors, the practical implications are clear: treaty due diligence is essential. The protections available to a foreign investor in India vary significantly depending on the applicable treaty, the investor's nationality, and the structure of the investment. Assumptions drawn from older agreements may no longer hold.

This material is for general information purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal or other advice. The contents of this publication do not constitute any opinion or determination of Indian law by us. Any comments in this publication are based on our experience as international counsel representing our clients in their deals and disputes which may have a connection with India. Freshfields does not practise Indian law and where Indian law advice is needed, we work alongside leading Indian counsel.

*The authors thank their intern, Gillian Choy, for her research assistance.