The event underscores the fracture between the Island’s exportable image and its life in ruins.
14ymedio, Havana, February 15, 2026 – The Cigar Festival, considered the premier international showcase for Cuban premium tobacco, was suspended this Saturday with no new date set, amid the worst energy crisis the Island has experienced in decades. The state-owned company Habanos S.A., which holds the global marketing monopoly on the famous cigars, published a brief statement on its website announcing that the 26th edition of the festival, scheduled for February 24–27, has been “postponed,” with a new date to be announced “in due course.”
The official argument claims the decision seeks to preserve “the highest standards of quality and experience” for the event. The reality on the Island, however, has already hit rock bottom: severe fuel rationing, closures or cutbacks of basic services, and a collapsed economy barely able to sustain its most elementary operations.
A worker in the hospitality sector, who has participated in previous editions of the Festival and requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, told 14ymedio that the suspension also thwarted plans for even greater displays of ostentation than last year. “Imagine that this year the private party was going to be at El Morro. The Chinese businessman who organizes the whole thing planned that, at one point during the night, the lighthouse would ‘catch fire’ at the tip, all done with lighting effects, like it was a giant cigar. It would have been visible across the whole city,” she said. According to the source, the businessman is “quite furious” about the cancellation of an event whose reasons, she says, were not only the fuel shortage but also the negative political impact of holding it in the midst of the crisis and after the backlash left by the previous edition.
The worker added that many of the employees involved this year felt an intense conflict that was not felt in previous years. “On one hand, the money was badly needed, because they pay well and in foreign currency. But on the other, there was fear,” she confessed. Fear of possible protests, of being singled out or confronted while serving drinks and dishes to a foreign elite insulated from the blackouts and shortages. “After what happened with the Capitol, no one wanted to be at the center of a viral photo or an altercation,” she said.
Thousands of Cubans reacted angrily to the multimillion-dollar waltz for an elite, in stark contrast to a population condemned to darkness
The previous edition of the Cigar Festival, held with a lavish gala dinner at the National Capitol, provoked widespread public rejection that overflowed onto social media. While the country endured prolonged blackouts, food shortages, and a generalized deterioration of daily life, images of foreign guests toasting under restored chandeliers and luxuriously set tables in one of the Republic’s most symbolic buildings were seen as an obscene provocation. Thousands of Cubans reacted with anger to the multimillion-dollar spectacle for an elite, in contrast with a population condemned to darkness, rationing, and daily hardship.
Each year, the Cigar Festival attracts millionaires, global distributors, and international aficionados to a celebration of selective glamour in colonial hotels and luxury halls in Havana. Its auction of exclusive humidors—artistic cases that preserve legendary cigars—has reached stratospheric figures. In the previous edition, a commemorative Behike Line humidor set a historic record by selling for 4.6 million euros, and the seven pieces auctioned totaled more than 16 million euros, destined, according to the Government, for Cuba’s public health system.
But that symbolic and real capital coexists grotesquely with a population pushed to the brink of destitution, following the interruption of oil supplies that Cuba imported mainly from Venezuela and Mexico. Thermoelectric plants, most of them obsolete, operate intermittently, and electricity generation never manages to meet national demand.
The decision to postpone the Festival comes at a time when Cuba’s economy is deteriorating rapidly due to multiple factors: the interruption of Venezuelan oil flows following the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the January 29 U.S. executive order threatening tariffs on those who supply fuel to the Island, and the chronic shortage of foreign currency that prevents the import of basic raw materials.
The suspension of the event confirms that outward-oriented luxury and the reality of the average Cuban have become a contradiction that is impossible to conceal
The energy crisis has also served as official justification for shortened workdays, strict gasoline and diesel rationing, temporary hotel closures, and alerts even at airports, where several airlines have canceled flights due to fuel shortages. At the same time, the regime has prioritized internal control, with systematic military exercises and a visible increase in repression.
The Government continues to blame the U.S. embargo and the tightening of oil restrictions for the crisis, presenting it as almost exclusively the result of blockade policy. But that narrative fails to dispel the widespread perception that the national economy is sinking due to internal mistakes and persistence in a failed model. While negotiations continue with foreign distributors and record sales figures are touted, such as the 827 million dollars earned from tobacco in 2024, Cubans’ daily lives unfold amid blackouts, shortages of food and medicine, and a health system on the brink of collapse.
In this context, the suspension of the event confirms that the luxury aimed at foreign audiences and the reality of the average Cuban have become a contradiction that is impossible to conceal. While humidors are auctioned for millions in gala halls, most neighborhoods in Havana and across the provinces survive at the brink. It is the stark contrast between showcase ostentation and everyday misery.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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