13th ADMM-Plus at Cebu: Rajnath Singh to Lead India

India will be represented at the highest level when Southeast Asia’s senior defence gathering meets this week. Raksha Mantri Shri Rajnath Singh will head the Indian delegation to the 13th ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus, better known as ADMM-Plus, at Cebu in the Philippines on 28 and 29 October 2026. He is listed to speak in the session on an exchange of views on regional and international security questions. Alongside the main agenda he will sit down with defence ministers of the participating countries one to one, take stock of running defence ties and look for ways to deepen the strategic partnerships further.

What ADMM-Plus is

The ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting is the topmost consultative and cooperative body on defence within ASEAN. Its Plus format widens the table to bring the grouping’s Dialogue Partners in. Eleven ASEAN member states take part, namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor Leste and Vietnam. Eight Dialogue Partners join them: India, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The purpose of the format is to strengthen cooperation on security and defence across this wider group.

India and the forum

India became a dialogue partner of ASEAN in 1992. The very first ADMM-Plus was held in Hanoi, Vietnam, on 12 October 2010. The meeting was not annual at the start; ministers have been gathering every year only since 2017. For the present year the chair of ADMM-Plus is the Philippines, which is also hosting. Within the mechanism India co-chairs the Experts Working Group on Counter-Terrorism jointly with Malaysia for the cycle running from 2024 to 2027.

Why it matters

India’s steady presence in the ADMM-Plus machinery is read as a marker of how far defence diplomacy in Southeast Asia has come under the Act East policy. The stated goal of that engagement is peace, stability and shared growth in the region, and the bilateral meetings on the margins are where much of the practical work on partnerships gets done.