Cuba faced a new wave of power disruptions early Wednesday as a major failure in the national grid left Havana and several western provinces without electricity.
Local media reported that four regions, from Pinar del Río to Mayabeque, were affected, while eyewitnesses described a capital city almost entirely dark before sunrise, with only hospitals and a handful of hotels still operating.
Authorities have not yet identified the cause of the collapse. The outage comes as Cuba's aging oil-fired power plants continue to struggle after years of fuel shortages and declining imports from key partners such as Venezuela, Russia and Mexico.
Repeated partial and nationwide blackouts
Recent months have brought repeated partial and nationwide blackouts, with many residents across the island enduring outages that stretch over 20 hours. Havana, long shielded from the worst of the crisis, now faces prolonged daily cuts as the country's infrastructure deteriorates.
Fuel imports in the first ten months of 2025 dropped by more than a third compared with the previous year, according to shipping data, as allies reduced shipments and Cuba's economic crisis deepened. The government has pointed to damaged infrastructure, fuel constraints and hurricane impacts as the main drivers of the worsening situation.