31st G8 summit

31st G8 summit
31st G8 Summit official logo
Host country	United Kingdom
Date	July 6–8, 2005
Follows	30th G8 summit
Precedes	32nd G8 summit

The 31st G8 summit was held on July 6–8, 2005 at the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, Scotland, United Kingdom and hosted by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The locations of previous G8 summits to have been hosted by the United Kingdom include: London (1977, 1984, 1991); and Birmingham (1998). A sixth U.K. summit was held in Lough Erne in 2013.

The Group of Seven (G7) was an unofficial forum which brought together the heads of the richest industrialized countries: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada starting in 1976. The G8, meeting for the first time in 1997, was formed with the addition of Russia. In addition, the President of the European Commission has been formally included in summits since 1981. The summits were not meant to be linked formally with wider international institutions; and in fact, a mild rebellion against the stiff formality of other international meetings was a part of the genesis of cooperation between France's President Giscard d'Estaing and West Germany's Chancellor Helmut Schmidt as they conceived the initial summit of the Group of Six (G6) in 1975.