Latest news in Cuba? September 20th, 2026

Nationwide Power Grid Collapse Cuba’s national electrical grid suffered a total collapse on Friday, September 18, leaving over nine million people across the island without power. The Ministry of Energy and Mines reported that failures along western transmission lines compounded by unstable weather triggered a widespread shutdown of the system. This marks the seventh nationwide blackout of 2026 and the twelfth major grid failure since late 2024.

WSLS+ 2

Restoration Efforts and Essential Services Efforts to restore service remain slow and fragile. By the weekend, electricity had only returned to small fractions of Havana (approximately 5% of users), with authorities relying on isolated “micro-islands” to power critical infrastructure, hospitals, and emergency services in select provinces. The prolonged outage has disrupted municipal water pumping, cooking gas availability, and telecommunications networks across multiple regions.

Al Jazeera+ 2

Severe Fuel Shortages and Sanctions The ongoing energy crisis continues to be driven by critical shortages of imported diesel and fuel oil required to run Cuba’s aging thermoelectric plants and backup generators. Cuban officials attribute the collapse to strict U.S. energy and trade restrictions enacted earlier in the year that block oil shipments and replacement parts, while U.S. officials maintain that long-standing domestic economic mismanagement is responsible for the deteriorating infrastructure.

Taipei Times+ 1