The informal dollar in Cuba reached 600 pesos on Thursday 4 June 2026, a new all-time high, according to El Toque, the diaspora outlet whose daily index is the most widely cited measure of Cuba's real exchange rate1. The rate was 568 on Tuesday 26 May, a 5.6 per cent depreciation in nine days; the euro reached 680 pesos over the same window. El Toque derives its figures from peer-to-peer transactions rather than the official Banco Central rate, which lags far behind.
The dollar stood at 540 in early May, so this week's reading is roughly 11 per cent higher in a month, building on a baseline that was already climbing. What accelerated it was the loss of fuel: the Sovcomflot tanker Universal turned away from Cuba on 26 May, leaving 270,000 barrels of diesel undelivered and widening the grid deficit, which deepens the import scramble that the informal market prices.
In the exchange rate, the sanctions architecture and the older fuel crisis meet. A peso this weak is not the product of any one June order; it reflects a structural shortage of hard currency that predates 2026. What the GAESA wind-down adds is the removal of the tourism and card flows that injected dollars into the economy, which is why the slide arrived in the same week the foreign operators began to leave.
