Cuba is slowly restoring electricity after its third nationwide blackout in less than 10 days and fifth major blackout of 2026. The outage began Tuesday when a fault at a thermoelectric plant caused the national power grid to fail, leaving the island’s 9.6 million residents without electricity.

Power restoration has been gradual. By early Wednesday, only about 24% of households in Havana had electricity again. Previous blackouts this month took more than 24 hours to fully restore, with some regions enduring outages lasting several days.

The crisis has deepened public frustration. Residents worry about food spoiling, and some have protested by banging pots and pans or burning piles of trash. One resident described the ongoing energy shortages as “killing people’s enthusiasm for life.”

According to Cuban officials, the country’s aging electrical system has been pushed to the brink by severe fuel shortages. The government attributes much of the crisis to U.S. sanctions and restrictions, particularly measures introduced by President Donald Trump that have reduced Cuba’s access to imported oil and spare parts for power plants. Officials say these shortages have made the power grid increasingly unstable and limited the use of emergency generators.

The article also notes that U.S.–Cuba relations have remained highly strained throughout 2026, with additional sanctions and other political developments further complicating Cuba’s economic and energy situation.

It’s worth noting that some of the geopolitical claims in the article—such as the stated reasons for Cuba’s fuel shortages and the descriptions of U.S. actions—reflect the perspectives of the sources quoted and are part of ongoing political disputes. Independent analysis may present different interpretations of the causes of Cuba’s energy crisis.