Bishkek spent its Independence Day as a staging ground. The republic turned 35 on Monday with the main celebration moved out to Talas in mid-September, the World Nomad Games opening at 17:00 at Bishkek Arena, and the summit venue waiting at the new Yrys-Ordo congress centre, opened on 24 August.
The council itself sits on Tuesday. Interfax counts 17 leaders due, from Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi and Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the leaders of Egypt, Togo, Laos and Vietnam, with UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres alongside. Press secretary Askat Alagozov's count of 21 heads of state is wider because it folds in the Nomad Games.
The signing table is set too: the document package tops out with a Bishkek Declaration for the SCO's 25th anniversary. What the plenary will adopt has largely been drafted. What the week will change is being settled at smaller tables.
Xi opened his state visit on Sunday night with an informal dinner at which, per Sadyr Japarov's press service, the two presidents held a confidential conversation on bilateral business and the key topics of the coming official events. The formal programme of the state visit is what the dinner opened, and the bilateral queue Bishkek has been loading since August runs from fuel agreements to border documents.
Modi landed from Tashkent with his deliverables already banked: an upgraded partnership with Uzbekistan and 10 signed documents, closed on the same Sunday he flew in. Moscow, for its part, announced its agenda in advance. Dmitry Peskov named the referendum choice as the subject Vladimir Putin brings to Nikol Pashinyan, and Yuri Ushakov named the Black Sea and Ukraine as the frame for the meeting with Erdogan.
What the plenary will adopt has largely been drafted.
By the time the council sits, most of what matters will have been signed or said at a side table. The declaration will mark an anniversary; the annexes will move fuel, borders and money. Watch two clocks today: the document package the state visit produces, and whether Yerevan answers Moscow before the two leaders are in one room.