Cloudflare Radar recorded 49 internet disruptions worldwide in the third quarter of 2026. Government-directed shutdowns were the largest category, with power outages close behind, in a report that shows how access still depends on electricity, physical infrastructure and political decisions.
Cloudflare Watch analysis
What happened
Cloudflare says 19 disruptions involved government-directed shutdowns, including 18 exam-related shutdowns in Iraq. Power failures caused 14 incidents across 10 countries, while natural disasters accounted for five. The report covers events from July to September and draws on traffic observed across Cloudflare’s network.
Some outages had sharp, measurable effects. A power failure at an interconnection facility in Honduras affected at least 11 providers; HTTP traffic across the country fell by 63% for about three hours. In Cuba, traffic fell by as much as 59% during a power-related outage. Cloudflare also recorded a 10-day shutdown in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, where traffic fell to zero in the affected area.
Why it matters
The figures make infrastructure resilience rather less abstract. A failure at a power grid, communications facility or fibre link can interrupt online services well beyond the site of the original fault. Cloudflare says 14 disruptions lasted under an hour, and another 16 recovered in less than three hours, but a short outage can still matter when people need information, coordination or help.
Our read
The striking point is not simply that outages happened, but how often the causes sit outside the internet’s own machinery. Cloudflare’s quarterly tally is a useful view from one network, not a complete census of every disruption. Still, it shows why resilience plans need to account for power and physical infrastructure, as well as routing around a technical fault.
What to watch
- Whether Iraq’s planned exam shutdowns continue in future exam periods.
- Whether the affected networks build resilience against power and interconnection failures.
- How quickly connectivity recovers when outages coincide with conflict or natural disasters.
Discussion spark: When a brief outage can still disrupt access to essential information, should governments and network operators prioritise preventing shutdowns, or making services resilient enough to recover quickly?
Sources and evidence
- What took the Internet offline in Q3 2026 (27 October 2026, 13:00 UTC)
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