Sri Lanka suffered an island-wide power cut on Saturday, 17 October 2026, from around noon. The Times of India, citing power officials, said the outage lasted more than three hours in the first phase and hit water, internet and mobile services. The water authority asked people not to waste water while the network remained unstable.

The cause was not confirmed on Saturday afternoon. The government said a fault at a hill-country hydropower station, detected on Friday, may have contributed. Energy minister Anura Karunathilaka urged rooftop-solar owners to keep their systems off the grid until it was stabilised, TOI reported, citing PTI.

The National System Operator, in a note carried by Newswire.lk, rejected rumours that several plants had broken down. NSO said hydropower plants that were running before the incident were being used for restoration, and that the Norochcholai coal plant was taken offline under standard procedures, not because of a mechanical failure.

At 15:38 local time NSO said supply had been returning area by area since noon and that the national grid might be restored around 18:30. The inquiry into transmission-system instability remains open. This article does not treat hydro or solar as a proven single cause until the operator publishes its finding.

The Straits Times later wrote, citing AFP, that the country was off the grid for about six hours and that engineers suspected an imbalance between weekend solar output and low demand. That is a press hypothesis, not NSO’s Saturday-afternoon conclusion.

Sri Lanka had a similar collapse in February 2025, also on a bright Sunday. Saturday’s outage is a grid event under investigation, not a confirmed breakdown at a named plant.

Image: Rehman Abubakr, Upper Kotmale dam, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons; 2011 archive hydro plant, not a photograph of the 17 October 2026 blackout.

Sources consulted: Sri Lanka hit by nationwide power blackout as grid failure disrupts electricity — Times of India; NSO denies power plant breakdown reports, expects full restoration by 6:30 p.m. — Newswire.