What's allowed in Cuba — and what isn't

Every asset on this atlas sits under two legal regimes at once, and you must satisfy both: U.S. sanctions law decides what a U.S. person may touch at all, and Cuban domestic law decides what a foreigner may own or do inside Cuba. A deal that is legal in Havana can still be a felony in Miami. This page is the plain-English map of both — with primary sources where we have them, and an honest flag where the law is unsettled.

Not legal advice. This page maps the law to its primary sources — the OFAC regulations, the statutes, and the official lists linked below — and an automated monitor checks those sources for changes every week. Sanctions law still turns on specifics and can move between updates; confirm any transaction with qualified OFAC sanctions counsel before acting.

Eligibility definition & authorizing GLs

§515.340 is a definition, not a license. The general licenses below each have a distinct scope — remittances, import-tied payments, internet/telecom. Read the relevance notes; do not fuse them into “pay any MIPYME.”

What changed in 2025–2026

Both regimes are moving fast. Reform Watch tracks the Cuban-side policy in depth — see Reform Watch. The dated milestones below are the ones that change what's legal.

• 2020-12-21GAESA designated on the OFAC SDN List (it had been on the State Department's Cuba Restricted List since November 2017)
• 2024-05-29CACR amendments effective — 515.340 redefines 'independent private sector entrepreneur'; expanded private-sector general licenses
• 2025-06-30NSPM-5 reissues the Trump-era hard-line Cuba memorandum: escalates pressure on the government, reaffirms the statutory ban on tourism, directs OFAC/Commerce to tighten the CACR, and directs OFAC to broaden the 'prohibited Government of Cuba officials' definition — which would narrow who counts as an eligible independent entrepreneur. Biden-era private-sector general licenses (remittances, U-Turn) remain in effect only until OFAC amends the regulations — which it did on September 30, 2026, withdrawing the U-turn and entrepreneur-account licenses while leaving §515.570 and §515.582 in place.
• 2025-07-14First State Department additions to the Cuba Restricted List and Prohibited Accommodations List under NSPM-5 take effect (more military-linked hotels barred).
• 2026-01-29E.O. 14380, 'Addressing Threats to the United States by the Government of Cuba' (91 FR 5085), escalates U.S. pressure on the Cuban government.
• 2026-03-04BIS suspends License Exception SCP §740.21(b)(1) — U.S. exports for the Cuban private sector's own economic activity — for any transaction involving the deposit of foreign funds into a Cuban-owned bank; payment paths that never touch a Cuban bank keep the exception, and the §740.21(b)(2) personal-use lane is unaffected (guidance under EAR §740.2(b); no Federal Register document).
• 2026-03–05Cuban Gazette / implementing measures discussed diaspora and foreign capital in the private economy — MIPYME-specific equity mechanics stayed unsettled until Decreto-Ley 133/2026 (2 September, below); none of it creates a U.S.-person OFAC equity license
• 2026-05-01E.O. 14404 (91 FR 25061) creates an IEEPA-based Cuba secondary-sanctions program on top of the CACR: blocking of persons designated for operating in the energy, defense, metals-and-mining, financial-services or security sectors, or owned/controlled by the Government of Cuba; §2(b) preserves Part 515-authorized activity, so the private-sector general licenses survive.
• 2026-06-18National Assembly approves ~176-measure reform package — scraps the state-JV requirement, authorizes private banks, opens foreign/diaspora equity in state & large private firms, lifts the 100-employee cap, allows direct private import/export (Cuban law; does not create a U.S.-person equity license)
• 2026-07-23State Department E.O. 14404 designations, added to OFAC's SDN list, include Terminal de Contenedores de Mariel S.A. and Coral Marítima S.A. — citing a mid-June 2026 port transfer as GAESA-linked sanctions evasion (OFAC recent actions 2026-07-23).
• 2026-08-20State Department and OFAC designate three ICAP officials and nine state entities under E.O. 14404, spanning metals and mining (Empresa de Niquel Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara, METALCUBA, ACINOX Comercial, GEOMINSAL), construction (Ministry of Construction), imports and logistics (TRANSIMPORT, CONSUMIMPORT), tourism supply (CORATUR) and labor contracting (ACOREC).
• 2026-08-25Presidential Determination 2026-21 (signed 20 August, 91 FR 54935) continues Trading With the Enemy Act authorities with respect to Cuba for one year, until 14 September 2027, as implemented by the CACR.
• 2026-09-02Decreto-Ley 133/2026 published (Gaceta Oficial No. 71; in force 9 September): abolishes the 100-worker cap on private firms; Art. 54(a) lets Cubans resident abroad and foreigners with permanent residence in Cuba be partners; Art. 9(i) lets a private firm associate with foreign capital under Law 118. Cuban law only — 31 CFR §515.340 still stops at 100 employees, and no U.S. general license lets a U.S. person take equity.
• 2026-09-03State Department and OFAC designate Banco Exterior de Cuba (financial services), COMERCIAL CUPET S.A. and ABAPET (energy), NICAROTEC and CEXNI (metals and mining), and one Castro family member under E.O. 14404; the same action issued Cuba General License 4A for third-country diplomatic and consular missions.
• 2026-09-17State Department designates eight entities and three individuals under E.O. 14404: four nickel-sector enterprises at Moa and Nicaro (SERCONI, CEPRONIQUEL, CEDINIQ, Pinares S.A.) and four FAR military research and production enterprises (SIMPRO, CIDNAV, CIDAI, GELCOM) with three of their directors general.
• 2026-09-30OFAC's CACR amendment takes effect (FR Doc. 2026-19973): §515.209 now bars indirect as well as direct financial transactions with Cuba Restricted List entities, with a new anti-evasion clause at §515.201(c); the 'U-turn' license at §515.584(d) is withdrawn (banks may only reject such transfers); the §515.584(h)(2) license for U.S. bank accounts held solely by an independent private-sector entrepreneur is withdrawn and existing accounts must be blocked (FAQ 1273); the professional-meetings license (§515.564(a)(2)) and group people-to-people travel (§515.565(b)) are eliminated and educational travel narrowed. §515.582 import-tied payments are not amended; §515.570 remittances stand, with only paragraph (d), on remittances to students, reworded. The same day OFAC issued the Cuba Sanctions Regulations, 31 CFR Part 516, implementing E.O. 14404.

3 · The only lane today

Put the two regimes together and one framed path survives for U.S. persons: remittance/support to independent private sector entrepreneurs under the applicable CACR rules (notably §515.570(g)(3)), with eligibility under §515.340, SDN/CRL screening, a rail that doesn't run on Cuban state-bank or regime-processor rails, and no confiscated-property nexus — often using a sanctions-aware peer-to-peer rail such as QvaPay, whose independent Cuban P2P forex traders complete the CUP/MLC ↔ QUSD conversion leg. Not equity, not state assets, not a determination that any transfer is authorized. See how support works and how QvaPay does it, the compliance posture, and the OFAC FAQ on digital entrepreneurs in Cuba (open interpretive questions plus our responses).

Confidence: Cuban-law and core OFAC statements above are drawn from primary sources (MINCEX/Ley 118, Gaceta Oficial, Federal Register 2024-11618, OFAC FAQs) and were adversarially verified; Helms-Burton and sanctions secondary-effects statements rest on named law-firm analyses and the ingested OFAC corpus and are not individually court-confirmed here. See Data & methodology. This is research, not legal advice — stand up any structure only with OFAC sanctions counsel and securities counsel.