Grid collapse causes countrywide blackout
Emergency crews were working to restore power to 10 million people on Wednesday, September 10, 2025, as Cuba suffered its fifth nationwide blackout in under a year, the energy ministry announced.
“There has been a total disconnection of the electric system,” the energy ministry and National Electric Union said early on Wednesday, September 2025.
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The grid failure follows a string of nationwide blackouts since late last year that plunged Cuba’s frail and antiquated power generation system into near-total disarray.
Earlier this week, an outage hit Cuba’s eastern region, leaving people from Las Tunas to Guantánamo in the dark for several hours.
In February, the government suspended classes and work activities for two days due to a shortage in electricity generation.
“This is crazy for everything,” Raúl Ernesto Gutierrez said in Havana.
Gutierrez, who said he was visiting the capital, said that back home in the countryside, “we will have to cook with charcoal, with firewood. It’s stressful and also frustrating.”
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The country has also been facing shortages of fuel, food, and other essential goods amid its worst economic crisis in decades.
Havana state worker Danai Hernandez said she was on the way home from work, which had just shut down.
“I’m going home to organise everything in the household and … now we have to wait. We don’t have any other choice,” she said, visibly upset.
Cuba’s oil-fired power plants, already obsolete and struggling to keep the lights on, reached a full crisis last year as oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico dwindled.
In October 2024, the island, which is suffering its worst economic crisis in three decades, was plunged into darkness for several days following a shutdown of the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric power plant, the island’s biggest.
Cuba’s energy crisis has worsened in recent years due to US sanctions intended to put pressure on the island to change its political model.
The sanctions have prevented the Caribbean nation from having sufficient foreign currency to purchase fuel or repair its aging thermoelectric plants, many of which have been in operation for more than 30 years.
The blackouts have led to rare anti-government protests.
