NEW DELHI — Prime Minister Narendra Modi has issued an official departure statement ahead of a critical five-day diplomatic tour to France and the Slovak Republic, spanning June 13–18, 2026. The multi-nation itinerary is strategically designed to deepen India’s high-tech manufacturing corridors, cement economic partnerships with the European Union, and present the economic priorities of the Global South at the 8th consecutive G7 Summit.
The tour commences in Nice, France, following an invitation from French President Emmanuel Macron. The engagement builds directly on Macron’s state visit to India earlier this year, which formally elevated bilateral ties to a Special Global Strategic Partnership. A primary anchor of this leg is the deep-tech ecosystem alignment. On June 14, both leaders will jointly inaugurate ‘Bharat Innovates’, a flagship exposition organized under the umbrella of the ongoing India-France Year of Innovation. The platform is designed to connect top-tier Indian deep-tech startups directly with European venture capital, serving as a structural accelerator that links commercial research emerging from India’s premier higher education institutes with global cross-border funding pipelines.
From Nice, the Prime Minister will travel to Bratislava for a historic State Visit from June 14–15, marking the first-ever visit by an Indian Prime Minister to the Slovak Republic since its independence in 1993. Modi will hold high-level delegations with Slovak President Peter Pellegrini and Prime Minister Robert Fico to expand bilateral defense production and industrial manufacturing ties. Amid ongoing negotiations surrounding the India-EU Free Trade Agreement, the administrative briefings with Slovak business leaders are positioned to de-bottleneck manufacturing supply chains within Central Europe, where Slovakia serves as an essential automotive and industrial engineering hub.
From June 16–17, the diplomatic focus shifts to Evian, France, where Prime Minister Modi will participate in the G7 Summit. This marks India’s eighth consecutive invitation to the G7 assembly, reflecting New Delhi’s solidified position as an indispensable global economic actor. The Prime Minister emphasized that India’s intervention at the summit will heavily focus on cross-border debt vulnerabilities, sustainable development financing, and ensuring equitable technology transfers for developing nations across the Global South.
The tour will conclude on June 18 in Paris, focusing entirely on next-generation digital architecture and soft power diplomacy. Alongside President Macron, the Prime Minister will tour VivaTech 2026, Europe’s premier annual technology convention. India will anchor the largest national pavilion at this edition, showcasing domestic public digital infrastructure and enterprise software scales. The trip wraps up with a community address to the Indian diaspora in Paris, highlighting their role as a living economic and cultural conduit between the two sovereign nations. The Prime Minister expressed absolute confidence that the coordinated tour would fundamentally reinforce India’s comprehensive engagement with European regulatory markets and the G7 leadership block.
