Related videos:
Cuba received only 30,883 international visitors in May 2026, the lowest monthly figure recorded in years, according to official data from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) published this Monday.
In the first five months of the year, the island welcomed 359,491 international tourists, a 58.4% decrease compared to the same period in 2025, equating to 505,706 fewer visitors, according to the same source.
The decline is widespread across all source markets. Canada, historically the main one, dropped from 387,396 visitors from January to May 2025 to just 126,239 in the same period of 2026, a decrease of 67.4%.
The Canadian collapse is especially dramatic month by month: from 99,724 tourists in January to just 795 in May, practically the disappearance of that market in a matter of weeks.
Russia followed a similar trend: from 15,688 visitors in January to just 86 in May, closing the cumulative period with 21,136 people, a 62.5% decrease compared to 2025.
United States dropped from 57,233 to 25,572 visitors in the period from January to May, a decrease of 55.3%, although its monthly flow stabilized around 4,500 visitors.
The only segment that held strong was the Cuban community abroad, which went from representing 6.8% of visitors in January to 47.6% in May, becoming the main source of tourists to the island since March.
In January, the Cuban community and visitors from the U.S. together accounted for 10.6% of the total; by May, they contributed 62.2%, according to data from ONEI analyzed by the economic analysis portal El Estado como tal.
The trigger for the collapse was the Executive Order 14380, signed by Donald Trump on January 29, 2026, which declared a national emergency regarding Cuba and authorized additional tariffs against countries supplying oil to the island.
On February 10, Cuba announced that it lacked fuel for commercial aviation, leading to the cancellation of flights from Air Canada and the Russian airlines Rossiya and Nordwind.
In April, Iberia suspended its direct flights from Madrid to Havana until November, and in May Plus Ultra discontinued its service as the operator of the only Cubana flight between Havana and Madrid.
The threat of secondary sanctions also accelerated the exit of major international hotel chains: Meliá ceased operations at 15 hotels, Iberostar stopped operating 12 linked to GAESA as of June 1, Blue Diamond Resorts left 62 hotels and more than 12,900 rooms, and Archipelago International withdrew from operations at six establishments under the Aston brand.
The hotel occupancy rate in the first quarter of 2026 fell to 12.9%, less than half of the already low 23.7% recorded in the same period of 2025.
The revenues of tourist entities from January to March 2026 amounted to 20.079 billion Cuban pesos, compared to 34.865 billion in the same period the previous year, representing a contraction of 42.4%.
Tourism was already in free fall before 2026: Cuba ended 2025 with just 1.8 million visitors, the lowest figures since 2002—excluding the pandemic years—and well below the government's target of 2.6 million.
The current figures are light years away from the records set in 2018 and 2019, when Cuba welcomed 4.6 and 4.2 million visitors respectively, driven by the diplomatic thaw with Washington.
While Cuban tourism is sinking, competing Caribbean destinations like Punta Cana and Cancun are recording historic highs in visitors, a gap that illustrates the cost of 67 years of dictatorship on an economy that never managed to take off.
Filed under: