CUBA REVIEW: Eleven Factors Shaping a Precarious 2026

Robert Louis Stevenson famously said, “sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.” Cuba closes a turbulent 2025 besieged on all fronts by the consequences of decades of bad luck and worse choices. Its economy, energy grid, and demographics are all collapsing. Havana’s co-dependent relationship with Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro is exposing it to U.S. coercive pressure on a scale not seen in the region since the 1980s. And all of it is happening amid growing domestic unrest, a rightward turn in Latin American politics, and backsliding diplomatic relations with Europe. Rather than articulating a decisive new strategy for pulling itself out of the morass, the Cuban government remains stuck in survival mode, managing the polycrisis through piecemeal adjustments and rigidly defensive discourse centered on “correcting distortions” and condemning the United States for all its ills—an approach that has long been running on empty. The warning signs are unmistakable: without a bold course correction, Cuba is heading toward further decline in 2026. A crisis of this magnitude demands political vision and difficult decisions that the country’s sclerotic leadership has thus far failed to produce. In this year-end edition, we explore eleven factors shaping Cuba’s immediate trajectory. Amid the turmoil, we also identify new economic actors and social forces that are quietly remaking the country’s foundations—a reminder that bottom-up transformation, however difficult or uncertain, is already underway.