G8

The Group of Eight in 2014

Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper  France President François Hollande  Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel  Italy Prime Minister Matteo Renzi  Japan Prime Minister Shinzō Abe  Russia President Vladimir Putin  United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron  United States of America President Barack Obama Also represented:  European Union Council President Herman Van Rompuy Commission President José Manuel Barroso

The Group of Eight (G8) was an intergovernmental political forum from 1997–2014 formed by incorporating Russia into the G7. The G8 became the G7 again after Russia was expelled in 2014 after the Russian annexation of Crimea.

The forum originated with a 1975 summit hosted by France that brought together representatives of six governments: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, thus leading to the name Group of Six or G6. The summit came to be known as the Group of Seven in 1976 with the addition of Canada. The European Union (or predecessor institutions such as the European Economic Community) was represented at the G8 since the 1980s as a "nonenumerated" participant, but originally could not host or chair summits. Russia was added to the political forum from 1997, which the following year became known as the G8. In 2005, the UK government initiated the practice of inviting five leading emerging markets – Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa – to participate in the G8 meetings that came to be known as G8+5.

"G8" referred to the member states in aggregate or to the annual summit meeting of the G8 heads of government. Each calendar year, the responsibility of hosting the G8 was rotated through the member states in the following order: France, United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, and Canada. The holder of the presidency sets the agenda, hosts the summit for that year, and determines which ministerial meetings will take place. G8 ministers also met throughout the year, such as the G8 finance ministers (who meet four times a year), G8 foreign ministers, or G8 environment ministers.

The G8 countries were not strictly the largest in the world nor the highest-income per capita, but they did represent the largest high-income countries. With the G20 major economies growing in stature since the 2008 Washington summit, world leaders from the group announced at their Pittsburgh summit in September 2009 that the group would replace the G8 as the main economic council of wealthy nations. Collectively, in 2012 the G8 nations comprised 50.1 percent of 2012 global nominal GDP and 40.9 percent of global GDP (PPP). In March 2014 Russia was suspended indefinitely following the annexation of Crimea, whereupon the political forum name reverted to G7. The 2014 G7 summit was hosted and chaired by the European Union instead of Russia.