Google Cloud Power Failure Disrupts Major United Kingdom Banks and Services

A power outage at a Google Cloud data centre near London caused widespread disruptions to services across the United Kingdom on October 20, 2026. The Guardian and Euronews both reported that the problem was caused by a power issue, with issues first detected just after 7:00 am in the europe-west2 London region. Google apologised for the interruption and stated that the event was mitigated by the afternoon. [1][11]

The outage knocked several major banking applications and operations offline. The Guardian, Financial Times, The Telegraph, and This is Money reported that impacted financial companies included Revolut, Halifax, HSBC, and Lloyds. The Guardian and Insurance Business both added that the technical failure also disrupted video cameras in United Kingdom courts, retailers, and other public services. [1][3][7][8][10]

Services began recovering by 1:00 pm local time, according to the Guardian and Investing.com. Regulators have moved to seek answers following the incident. UK Parliament published a letter from the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority concerning the system disruption. [1][2][9]

Google Cloud provides modular cloud computing services including computing, data storage, and data analytics. The platform runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for end-user products such as Google Search and Gmail. [12]