Havana’s Main Trade Fair Leaves Expocuba for a Screen

Hurricane Rafael cut Cuba’s 40th Havana International Fair to two days in November 2024, the first weather shutdown in the event’s history. Organizers had opened FIHAV 2024 at Expocuba as proof that foreign firms still wanted a seat in Havana. The 41st edition came back a year later and closed three foreign-capital deals. The 42nd, set for November 24 to 26, 2026, will run mostly online, with one in-person business day at the Palacio de Convenciones.

The 40th Fair Opened as a Confidence Play

President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez cut the ribbon on November 4, 2024. Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, then minister of foreign trade and foreign investment, dedicated the anniversary to Fidel Castro, the official founder of the fair, and treated the turnout as an answer to anyone who had asked whether Havana should bother.

Keeping the fair is consistent with our government’s will and decision to restart the economy, even in the most complex conditions, in which the participation of foreign companies and organizations is decisive.

Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, FIHAV 2024 opening, Expocuba

The presidency’s account put 700 exhibitors from 63 countries on 19,400 square meters, a larger floor than the year before. More than 250 Cuban companies were on that floor, including the non-state sector. More than 60 Cubans who live abroad and do business with the island were listed as companions, not as a footnote.

Official delegations arrived from Angola, Belarus, Brazil, Colombia, Spain, Honduras, Iran, Mexico, Mozambique, Namibia, Panama, Portugal, the Dominican Republic, Russia, and Venezuela. Another 27 chambers of commerce and trade-promotion bodies sent people. The 7th Investment Forum was supposed to refresh the foreign-investment portfolio and push territorial deals. Díaz-Canel, Pérez-Oliva, and Vice Prime Minister Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz walked more than a dozen pavilions after the tape was cut.

A month earlier, at an Expocuba prep check led by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz, Pérez-Oliva had counted 193 national firms, 30 of them MSMEs, and more than 50 nations confirmed. Opening day raised those Cuban and country counts. The official line did not change: the fair was how Cuba showed it was still open.

Hurricane Rafael Shut Expocuba for the First Time

The fair was booked for November 4 to 9, 2024, six days in cyclone season. It opened under a cyclone alert. Rafael, a Category 3 hurricane, made landfall at 4:20 p.m. on November 6 on the southern coast of Artemisa and left more than two hours later on the northern coast of Pinar del Río. Pérez-Oliva later told exhibitors the storm had also knocked down more than 400 homes in the west, along with power lines, crops, and hospital plant.

At Expocuba the hit was specific. The Central Pavilion and Pavilion 2 took the damage. Trees came down. Drinking water, electricity, and communications went out. Organizers said exhibitor goods were saved and that no losses of those goods had been reported. They also said the site no longer had the conditions to continue.

THE WEEK RAFAEL HIT THE 40TH FAIR

1. November 4, 2024: Díaz-Canel opens the 40th FIHAV at Expocuba as planned.
2. November 5, 2024: The second full business day runs; Pérez-Oliva later says those two days met the scheduled deal agenda.
3. November 6, 2024: Rafael crosses western Cuba as a Category 3 storm.
4. November 7, 2024: The organizing committee suspends the fair for force majeure, the first weather stop in the event’s history, and tells firms to keep meeting at the Hotel Nacional, Hotel Palco, and the Palacio de Convenciones.

Pérez-Oliva told the hall that a decision of that size had never been required, even though FIHAV had always sat in hurricane season. He said some meetings set after November 5 had already been cancelled as the storm approached. National stands started coming down on November 7. Foreign exhibits were due out the next day with help from the General Customs of the Republic.

He also said the committee would move future fairs off cyclone season, which he described as more frequent and more intense. That promise did not move the 2025 dates out of November. It did not keep the 2026 edition on the Expocuba floor either.

FIHAV 2025 Closed With Three Foreign Deals

The 41st Havana International Fair ran November 24 to 29, 2025, back at Expocuba. Organizers again cited more than 700 companies, this time from 52 countries, 11 fewer than in 2024. Cuban participation was counted at 268 firms, state and private. Pérez-Oliva, by then deputy prime minister as well as trade minister, used the 8th Investment Forum to announce faster approvals, a business plan in place of a feasibility study, and a portfolio of 426 projects in 13 sectors.

Marrero closed the week. He told visiting executives that Cuba wanted business to be simpler, faster, and safer, and that ministers had orders to rewrite the rulebook. The signed haul was smaller than the rhetoric.

WHAT FIHAV 2025 ACTUALLY SIGNED

• Foreign-capital deals: Three new businesses, two in food production and one in lighting.
• Trade paper: Fourteen letters of intent, four commercial contracts, one agreement, and one memorandum of understanding in medical services, agriculture, communications, and industry.
• Chamber pacts: Three agreements between Cuba’s Chamber of Commerce and counterpart bodies in three countries.
• Investor meetings: More than 30 sessions with potential investors from eight countries, covering 12 sectors.

Marrero still called the turnout proof of “growing interest” in a market he said was becoming more competitive. He told the room, “Cuba is counting on you.” The concrete foreign-capital close was those three businesses. Letters of intent are not factories, and the lighting deal sat beside a food crisis the government itself keeps describing as severe.

THREE EDITIONS OF THE HAVANA FAIR

Country count is the clean drop. Cuban firm count did not fall. What fell away is the claim that a packed pavilion is the same thing as closed capital.

Private Firms and Cubans Abroad Took the Extra Floor

The 2024 opening was still a state fair. The extra bodies on the floor were not. Prep numbers had already flagged 30 MSMEs among 193 national exhibitors. Opening day folded the non-state sector into the “more than 250” Cuban total and put more than 60 residents abroad on the guest list. Cuban companies, state and private, dominated the 19,400 square meters even with Spain, Russia, China, Vietnam, Brazil, and Mexico in the halls.

Those licensed small firms in Cuba had only been legal as MSMEs since 2021. They buy the food the state stores do not stock, and they already run their own supplier trips. A month before FIHAV 2024, owners of Cuban MSMEs were in Miami Beach meeting meat, milk, rice, and egg suppliers, a parallel circuit that does not need Expocuba. Latin American firms in Cuba’s private sector have been using that same gap, selling into shops the state cannot fill.

The diaspora track is the one Havana now advertises in public. Pérez-Oliva put those more than 60 residents abroad into the 2024 opening speech. Marrero, closing 2025, asked compatriots overseas to “contribute to the development of their homeland.” For 2026, Cuba’s commercial office in Panama said non-state actors will have their own stand space on the virtual floor, to show brands and look for partners.

#Eventos #Empresas #Comercio

¡FIHAV 2026
💡 ¡Novedad! Actores no estatales, contarán con su propio espacio de stand para proyectar sus marcas, establecer alianzas estratégicas y conectar con el mercado internacional.
👉 https://t.co/f95kgsTdMW#FIHAV2026 pic.twitter.com/szmfjPqldE

— Oficina Comercial Embajada de Cuba en Panamá (@OFICOME_Panama) September 28, 2026

That is a quieter fair than a Russian or Spanish pavilion, and it is the part of the 2024 floor that still has a path into 2026. State-to-state delegations photograph well. Private grocers and Cuban-Americans writing checks are the ones who actually restock a neighborhood shop.

Why the 2026 Fair Is Mostly Online

On September 4, 2026, Pérez-Oliva told a press conference that the 42nd FIHAV would be hybrid from November 24 to 26, 2026, because of what he called a tighter U.S. economic, commercial, and financial blockade. Exhibitors will show goods on the organizing committee’s site. The one in-person session is a business forum on November 26 at the Palacio de Convenciones, where the portfolio of opportunities is due to be updated again and Cuban residents abroad are again on the invite list.

Antonio Luis Carricarte Corona, president of the Chamber of Commerce of the Republic of Cuba, said that day should let Cuban and foreign firms present projects and build supply links. Palco, the events group that has long run the physical halls, was in the briefing. Registration opened September 15 and runs through November 15, 2026. The agenda names artificial intelligence and exportable goods and services, the language of a conference more than a warehouse floor.

#FIHAV 2026 se celebrará del 24 al 26 de noviembre, en formato virtual y presencial. Desde ya está abierta la invitación al empresariado nacional y foráneo, así como a los cubanos residentes en el exterior, a registrarse y participar, a través de https://t.co/xtCG98o5yP. pic.twitter.com/4FIHxFVb9n

— Ministerio de Economía y Planificación de Cuba (@MEP_CUBA) September 26, 2026

The economy ministry’s own post invites Cuban and foreign firms, and Cubans living abroad, to register. Cuban commercial offices in Italy and Panama have been repeating the dates. A science park in Villa Clara is even selling a technical-English course with a FIHAV 2026 deadline. The public conversation around the fair is almost entirely that official circuit. It is not a rush of foreign buyers arguing over booth space.

On the state news site that carried the hybrid announcement, one reader replied by pasting the dictionary definition of hybrid, a dry way of saying two things had been glued together. Organizers still call it an “Edición Especial.” It is also a way to keep the FIHAV name without paying for 25 pavilions at Expocuba, without betting a second November on another Rafael, and without having to count empty foreign stands in public.

New Wholesale Rules Arrive Before the Hybrid Dates

The substitute for floor space is paperwork. On October 2, 2026, the government published Official Gazette No. 82, ordinary edition, a packet that includes Decreto 183/2026, signed by Marrero on September 21. The decree amends Decreto 32 of February 22, 2021, the rulebook for foreign commercial representations. Branches already licensed in Cuba may import and export for trade, issue commercial invoices, move goods inside the country, and sell wholesale. General retail stays out of bounds. Representation offices that are not branches keep the old limits.

Déborah Rivas Saavedra, deputy minister of foreign trade and foreign investment, said the same package lets those representations hire Cuban workers directly, without a state employment agency. Direct hiring had already been opened to foreign-capital companies under Decreto-Ley 128, which amended Foreign Investment Law 118. The October rules extend that option to a different legal class, the commercial representations.

One of the main effects this measure could have is the elimination of intermediaries in the distribution chain.

Déborah Rivas Saavedra, Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, news conference on Gazette No. 82

Until now, she said, a foreign supplier sold the goods and a Cuban importer cleared, hauled, and distributed them. Branches can now take that wholesale step themselves. Cuban legal entities can also apply to import and export through the foreign-trade single window, without a go-between. Resolutions 151 and 152 in the same gazette cover non-commercial imports by representations and the labor rules for people they hire.

That is the 2025 closing speech turned into articles of a decree: fewer steps, fewer agencies, a hope that prices of imported inputs fall. It is also an admission that the fair, as a physical market, is no longer doing that work. The 40th edition never got a closing day. The 41st got three foreign-capital signatures. The 42nd will ask the same investors to log in, then, if they are already on the island, to show up for a single Thursday at the Palacio de Convenciones.

Registration for FIHAV 2026 stays open through November 15, 2026. Expocuba is not on the program.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of Cuba’s Havana International Fair and of published investment and trade rules. It is for information only and is not investment advice, legal advice, or a recommendation to put money into any Cuban project, joint venture, or commercial representation. Readers considering a contract, a license, or a capital commitment should consult a qualified international trade lawyer and a licensed investment adviser who can review the current Gazette texts, U.S. and other sanctions, and the specific vehicle. Figures, dates, and legal statuses here follow the official statements and Gazette issues cited in the piece and can change as new decrees are published or as FIHAV 2026 participation is counted.