Saudi Arabia will allocate 9.3 million dollars to build a mosque in Havana at a time when Cuba is experiencing its worst energy crisis in decades, without the Gulf money translating into a single barrel of oil for the island.
This was revealed in an investigation by journalist Darío Hernández published in 14ymedio, which confirmed the recent fencing of the land where the complex will be built.
The chosen site is that of the old thermoelectric plant of Tallapiedra, in Old Havana, a facility that is no longer in operation, whose extinguished chimneys will someday contrast with the minarets of the so-called King Salman Mosque.
The complex will feature prayer rooms for about 500 people, a public library, a dining hall, green spaces, and community rooms. The design is handled by Restaura, a specialized entity of the Office of the Historian of Havana, while the construction is carried out by Engimov Caribe, a company with 100% Portuguese capital based in the Mariel Special Development Zone.
The funding comes from the Saudi Fund for Development, although the formal investor is the Office of the Historian itself, which manages the funds. The construction permit dates back to 2020, but the project has seen nearly a decade of announcements without even laying the foundations at this point.
The contrast is hard to ignore: Cuba needs between 90,000 and 110,000 barrels of oil daily to sustain its electrical system, but produces only about 40,000. So far in 2026, the country has experienced at least eight total collapses of the National Electric System, with deficits exceeding 2,000 megawatts and power outages in some areas exceeding 24 hours each day. Saudi money is arriving, but not in the form of fuel.
Relations between Cuba and Saudi Arabia date back to 1956. The Saudi Fund for Development has financed a total of seven projects on the island—in health, sanitation, and infrastructure—worth approximately 193.3 million dollars.
However, according to a source from the Office of the Historian who spoke to 14ymedio, part of a loan of 26.6 million dollars originally intended for housing has been diverted to the Fidel Castro Ruz Center, in El Vedado, and to the Capitol. "The credit was supposed to be for housing, but they took part of it for the Center and for the Capitol as well," said this source.
The project has a tangled history. In 2014, it was Turkey that proposed financing a mosque in Havana, driven by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who went so far as to invoke a supposed pre-Columbian Islamic presence on the island: "Columbus reported that there was a mosque on a hill along the coast of Cuba. I will discuss with my brothers in Cuba how appropriate it would be to build a mosque on top of that hill."
The Cuban regime initially rejected the proposal, then accepted it, but the Turkish plan never materialized. In 2016, the funding transferred to Saudi hands, and there was talk of a complex for up to 10,000 believers, which would have been the largest in Latin America.
The Muslim community in Cuba is small and relatively newly organized. Although there are historical references to Muslim African slaves and to Arab immigrants—Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian—from the late 19th century, the organized practice of Islam primarily grew from the 1990s onward, fueled by the religious openness that followed the Special Period.
The Islamic League of Cuba was legally recognized in 2007, and it is estimated that the community does not exceed 5,000 believers throughout the island. Its only formal place of worship in the capital is the Abdallah mosque, located on Oficios street. Believers face additional difficulties in obtaining halal products and celebrating festivities such as Ramadan or Eid in an environment of widespread scarcity.
The Cuban ambassador in Riyadh, Vladimir González, described that community in 2022 as "a small Muslim community in the country; very organized," and added that he felt "honored to facilitate their lives as Muslims in Cuba."
For those few thousand faithful, the King Salman Mosque —which in September 2026 still does not have its foundations laid— would be the first major Islamic complex on the Island.
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