Cuba now ranks among the three worst countries in the world for internet freedom, according to Freedom House's newly released Freedom on the Net 2026 report. The island scored just 19 out of 100 points, a two-point drop from the previous year that erases a modest gain recorded in 2025 and cements Cuba's place in the "Not Free" category, ahead of only Russia among the 38 nations surveyed.
A Score Built on Collapse
The report, titled "Seismic Shifts on the Global Internet" and covering June 2025 through May 2026, breaks Cuba's score into three pillars: access, content, and user rights. Cuba managed only 5 of 25 points for obstacles to access, 9 of 35 for content limitations, and a mere 5 of 40 for violations of user rights. That last figure is especially telling. It suggests that even when Cubans manage to get online, the risks of surveillance, prosecution, and reprisal remain severe. By comparison, China, Iran, and Myanmar each scored 9 points overall, meaning Cuba now sits closer to the global floor than to the middle of the pack.
Blackouts, Broken Infrastructure, and the Cost of Connection
Much of the decline traces back to Cuba's energy crisis. Nationwide blackouts left large portions of the telecommunications network without power, since backup batteries at mobile radio bases and switching cabinets can sustain service for only a few hours before failing. Freedom House notes that outages left roughly 47.5 percent of mobile radio bases and 56.5 percent of telecommunications cabinets non-functional during the worst periods. A single blackout in March 2026 triggered a 65 percent collapse in internet traffic, with full recovery taking around 29 hours - a disruption long enough to silence independent reporting, delay emergency communication, and cut off families from one another.
Affordability compounded the damage. In May 2025, state operator ETECSA capped peso-based mobile reloads at 360 CUP a month, effectively pushing users toward packages priced in foreign currency. Freedom House calculates this amounted to a thirteenfold increase in the real cost of mobile internet for many Cubans, placing basic connectivity further out of reach in a country already struggling with scarcity and inflation.
Prosecutions, Hacked Accounts, and a Climate of Fear
Digital repression deepened alongside the infrastructure crisis. Freedom House lowered its score for online mobilization after documenting lengthy prison sentences handed to activists who organized protests through social media, including one term of 14 years. Among the cases cited: activist Alexander Verdecia, sentenced to seven years over social media posts; a journalist sentenced to six years for protesting, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists; and Yasser García López, sentenced in May 2026 to five years for Facebook posts.
The report also states that ETECSA "apparently facilitated" the hacking of accounts belonging to activists, opposition figures, and independent journalists - an assessment, Freedom House stresses, rather than a judicial finding. Because the state controls network infrastructure and verification systems, it is positioned to intercept authentication codes used to secure personal accounts, a vulnerability with few parallels in more open telecommunications markets. A January 2026 study by Prisoners Defenders, drawing on 200 testimonies, found that 98.5 percent of participants reported reprisals tied to digital activity, and nearly half said their accounts had been accessed without authorization. At least 23 independent Cuban news sites, including 14ymedio, CubaNet, Diario de Cuba, El Toque, and CubaHeadlines, remained blocked throughout the period.
Part of a Wider Global Retreat
Cuba's trajectory mirrors a broader pattern. Freedom House reports that global internet freedom has now declined for sixteen consecutive years, with conditions worsening in 16 of the 38 countries assessed and improving in just eight. "Authoritarian regimes are reshaping the internet as a system of control, deciding who can connect, what they can see, and if they can be heard," said Kian Vesteinsson, the report's author and Freedom House's Deputy Director of Research, adding that democracies "must lead the charge for a free and open internet" while authoritarian governments invest in keeping people disconnected.
For Cubans, that contest plays out in blackouts that silence phones, reload limits that price out ordinary users, and prison terms that turn a Facebook post into a criminal act. The report's findings suggest the island's digital isolation is not incidental but the product of deliberate policy choices compounding genuine economic hardship.