Havana during a nationwide blackout on Aug. 3, 2026. Cuba’s power grid failed on Aug. 2, 2026, causing another nationwide blackout. State-run UNE said there was a “total disconnection” of the national electricity system, plunging the country, including the capital, into abrupt darkness. Yamil Lage / AFP via Getty Images
Cuba’s electricity grid collapsed on Aug. 2, the state-owned energy operator announced, leaving some 10 million people in darkness.
Unión Eléctrica de Cuba stated in an X post on the night of Aug. 2 that a “total disconnection of the National Electric Power System” (SEN) had occurred.
Updates provided on the utility company’s Facebook page state that by the early hours of Aug. 3, two units of Energas Boca de Jaruco had been brought back online.
Further updates on the social media platform followed throughout the morning, and by about 6:40 a.m. local time, 12 substations and 29 distribution circuits had been brought back online. Power had also been restored to 19 hospitals.
“The restoration is carried out gradually to the extent that the conditions of the SEN allow,” Unión Eléctrica stated.
The nationwide power outage had followed an earlier trip of two lines in provinces from Pinar del Rio to Matanzas, but that was resolved by the early hours of Aug. 2, according to a statement on the Unión Eléctrica’s website.
Previous Blackouts
The power cuts in the past two days follow several collapses of the grid in Cuba last month.
The grid totally collapsed for the third time in nine days on July 14, and power had gone down previously on July 10 and July 7.
Power outages on July 7 prompted protests in the capital city of Havana, with residents banging pots, honking car horns, and shouting “turn on the lights.”
Cuba suffered several nationwide blackouts in the past year before U.S. President Donald Trump
off oil deliveries to Cuba from Venezuela in January, exacerbating the situation.
Caracas had long been Havana’s primary supplier of oil. Imports from Mexico have also halted amid increased U.S. pressure.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously said Cuba’s grid has been unreliable due to years of neglect.
“They were having blackouts last year. They’re having blackouts because they have equipment from the 1950s in their grid that they’ve never maintained and never upgraded, because they’re incompetent. That’s why they’re having blackouts,” Rubio told reporters in March.
US Sanctions Cuban Energy Company
In June, the U.S. State Department announced sanctions against Cuba’s state-owned oil and gas company, Unión Cuba-Petróleo, under Trump’s May executive order.
In the June 11 statement, Rubio, whose parents fled Cuba in the 1950s for Florida, said that “energy has long been weaponized by Cuba’s communist government as a tool of both repression and self-serving regime kleptocracy.”
“While the Cuban people have suffered fuel shortages and blackouts because of decades of under-investment in critical infrastructure, Cuba’s Communist leaders have diverted energy resources to line their own pockets: reselling countless barrels of scarce energy on the secondary market, hoarding energy supplies for its military, intelligence and repressive forces, and rationing energy as a tool of social control,” he said.
Later that month, Trump suggested that if the United States were to conduct a raid on Cuba, it could resemble the January mission that resulted in the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in Caracas.
In a June 19 interview with Axios, the U.S. president said that the timing of any potential action in Cuba remains “flexible,” declining to offer details.
Trump praised Rubio’s work on Cuba.
“Marco’s doing a great job. Marco’s parents—it’s such a great story—his parents were from Cuba,” Trump said.
Reuters, Emel Akan, and Jill McLaughlin contributed to this report.
