Cuba’s derelict and barely-functional power grid completely failed twice between Sunday and Monday, marking the fourth and fifth nationwide blackouts that have struck the island nation in less than a month.
Over the past six decades, the communist Castro regime’s mismanagement of the nation’s power grid and power plants has forced Cubans to live through recurring blackouts — making it one of the longest-standing consequences of communism in Cuba after late murderous dictator Fidel Castro violently took control of the country in 1959.
Cuba’s dysfunctional power generation largely relies on seven obsolete thermal power plants, some of which are over four decades old and have not been renovated or replaced through time. The already dramatic situation has drastically worsened since 2024, when the Cuban power grid, after years without due maintenance and renovation works, completely collapsed several times.
Although the Castro regime managed to bring the derelict grid back online in 2024, it has been operating at diminished capacity since then, leaving it highly susceptible to further, continuously worsening blackouts in the following years.
At press time, Cuba has suffered seven different nationwide blackouts this year alone — five of which occurred between July 9 and August 3. The multiple nationwide blackouts are completely separate from the daily and severe rolling blackouts that, for years, have forced Cubans to endure upwards of 30 hours without power per blackout.
The two most recent nationwide blackouts in Cuba at press time occurred within 24 hours of each other. On Sunday, August 2, the Cuban power grid completely collapsed late at night. The Castro regime’s electric authority, the Electric Union (UNE), confirmed the blackout through its official Facebook page, but failed to provide any details on the causes behind the incident.
At the time, the U.S. Embassy in Havana issued a security alert noting that the reasons behind the collapse were unknown. The American embassy stressed the increasing instability of Cuba’s power grid, leading to more frequent and more prolonged blackouts.
Although UNE had reportedly achieved partial success in restoring power in some parts of Cuba after Sunday’s blackout, the power grid completed collapsed again on Monday, the fifth nationwide blackout in a month.
According to Granma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, “weather events associated with thunderstorms and heavy rains” in Western Cuba caused the second nationwide blackout on Monday — which remains unresolved at press time.
Similar remarks were shared by UNE on Cuban state television. According to Reuters, UNE affirmed, “During the process of restoring the SEN, existing weather conditions caused disruptions to the grid, directly affecting generating units that were online.” Much like past nationwide blackouts in Cuba, the two most recent power outages appear not to have affected the Cuban regime’s state media apparatus.
Both nationwide blackouts were preceded by a different blackout that left roughly half of Cuba without power on Saturday.
Sunday’s and Monday’s nationwide blackouts occurred just weeks after Cuba was struck by three different nationwide blackouts over the span of nine days during the first half of July on July 6, July 9, and July 14. The two most recent incidents bring the number of nationwide blackouts experienced in Cuba during summer 2026 to a staggering total of five at press time.
The Spanish newspaper El País explained that, to restore power in Cuba following a nationwide blackout, UNE workers must carry out a 24-hour-long process that involves generating an initial amount of power from solar, hydroelectric, or generator engines to small areas. The temporarily-powered areas are then interconnected to deliver enough to one of the aging thermal plants to jumpstart it back online.
In addition to the July and August incidents, Cuba suffered two separate nationwide blackouts this year in March — one of which occurred right as a cohort of international leftists were gathered in Havana to express their support to the Communist Castro regime as part of the “Nuestra America Convoy.”
March’s far-left gathering in Havana saw the participation of Isra Hirsi, daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN); members of the leftist agitator group Code Pink; “streamer” personality Hasan Piker; British former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn; and the former head of the Spanish Marxist political party Podemos Pablo Iglesias, among several others.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.