Cuba suffered a complete nationwide blackout on Monday, July 6, 2026, after its national electrical grid experienced a total collapse.
The outage left nearly 10 million people without electricity as a tightening U. S.
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oil blockade depletes the island's fuel reserves.
The state-run electrical utility, Electric Union (UNE), reported the total disconnection from the national generation system and announced that the cause of the collapse is currently under investigation.
The Ministry of Energy and Mines stated on X that it has activated recovery protocols to restore power across the island.
Energy Crisis Worsens
The energy crisis has intensified since January, when U. S.
President Donald Trump imposed an oil blockade and threatened tariffs on nations supplying petroleum to Cuba.
According to AP News, the island produces only 40 percent of its required fuel, and a 730,000-barrel Russian oil shipment that arrived in late March was completely exhausted by the end of April.
The power collapse marks the third nationwide outage in Cuba within the last six months and the eighth since late 2024.
Prior to the total collapse, authorities had already implemented rolling blackouts lasting over 24 hours in parts of Havana and exceeding 70 hours in some rural provinces to conserve dwindling fuel.
The ongoing electrical and economic crisis has severely strained public transportation, forced officials to cancel tens of thousands of medical surgeries, and compromised essential services like education and medicine.
The United Nations has previously warned of a looming humanitarian emergency as food, drinking water, and medicine supplies dwindle.
