"UN Cuba Embargo Vote 2026: The Annual Resolution Washington Cannot Stop — But Can Shrink"

On Wednesday, the United Nations General Assembly votes for the 34th time on whether the United States should end its economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba. The resolution will almost certainly pass. It has passed every year since 1992, and nothing in this week's debate suggests that streak is about to break. The interesting question is not whether it passes, but how much smaller the majority gets — because that number, more than the ritual itself, is where the real story of this year lives.

The long arc is striking. In 1992, the first vote drew just 59 countries in favour, with 71 abstentions. Support climbed through the 1990s and 2000s and peaked at 191 votes in favour in 2015, 2016 and 2017, during the thaw under Barack Obama. In 2024 it was still 187 in favour, with only the United States and Israel against and a single abstention. Then came the drop: in 2025, the tally fell to 165 in favour, 7 against and 12 abstentions, the lowest level of support in more than a decade. Argentina, Hungary, North Macedonia, Paraguay and Ukraine joined the United States and Israel in voting no. That 22-vote fall in a single year is the backdrop to everything happening in the chamber this week.

This year, Washington is not leaving the result to habit. The Trump administration has imposed more than two dozen new sanctions on Cuba since January, including restrictions on fuel imports, and President Donald Trump has called Cuba a "completely failed state" and raised the prospect of American warships stopping over in Cuba on their way back from the Iran war. At the United Nations, Ambassador Mike Waltz hosted an invitation-only event aimed at persuading member states to withdraw their support, and during Tuesday's debate he dismissed the annual exercise as "political theater" by a regime casting itself as a victim. Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez walked to the podium mid-speech, called Waltz a liar and tried to raise a point of order, briefly halting the session. It was undiplomatic, and it was also revealing: both sides now treat this vote as a live contest rather than a ceremony.

Havana's case has not changed much in substance. Cuban officials put the embargo's cost at $8.056 billion between March 2025 and February 2026, and more than $178.7 billion over six decades, and they link the measures to fuel shortages, blackouts and hardship on the island. The counter-argument, pressed by Washington and by Cuban dissident groups who urged democratic governments to vote against or abstain, is that the resolution shields a government that should be pressed to reform, and that blaming the embargo excuses its own failures. Both arguments can be partly true at once, which is perhaps why the vote has survived for 34 years: it lets every government say something about Cuba without having to do anything about Cuba. The resolution is non-binding, and only the United States Congress can actually lift the embargo.

That is what makes the shrinking majority worth watching. A resolution that passes 187-2 is a statement of near-consensus; a resolution that passes 165-7, with abstentions climbing, is a statement with a visible crack in it. In a special session in July 2026, support reportedly fell as low as 136 votes in favour, though that was a different sitting with a different dynamic, and the annual vote usually draws a broader majority than a special session does. Still, the direction of travel is clear, and Washington's pressure campaign is designed to accelerate it. My judgment is that this year's annual vote will pass with fewer than 165 votes in favour — support will keep sliding from its 2025 level, even if the resolution itself is never in doubt. If I am wrong and the tally holds or rebounds, that will itself be news: it would mean the pressure campaign hit its limit.

I find something oddly honest about this ritual, for all its staginess. The General Assembly cannot end the embargo, and everyone in the room knows it. What it can do, once a year, is take a measurement — of how isolated Washington is willing to be on this question, and of how many governments still think that isolation is worth marking. The measurement has been moving for two years now. Wednesday's number will tell us whether it is still moving, and how fast.