Google Cloud outage hits UK
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The gist
A Google Cloud outage in its London region disrupted UK banks including Lloyds, HSBC and Revolut on Tuesday.
The disruption shows how much everyday banking depends on a few cloud providers.
Background
Google Cloud is the cloud-computing arm of U.S. technology giant Google; its London region, known as europe-west2, hosts infrastructure that many companies' apps rely on. The outage began at 6:08 a.m. GMT and Google attributed it to a "power event" at its London data centre. It drew attention because several UK banks — including digital bank Revolut, which serves more than 80 million customers globally and 13 million in the UK — plus retailers and delivery firms reported problems at the same time.
How it unfolded
- Oct 20, 2026 06:08The Google Cloud outage began in its London region (europe-west2), disrupting online services for UK banks in and around London.
- Oct 20, 2026Google said the outage was "due to a power event" at its London data centre and expected full recovery around 1300 GMT.
- Oct 20, 2026Lloyds, Halifax, HSBC and Revolut reported disruptions; Revolut said ATM withdrawals, bank transfers and card top-ups were affected.
- Oct 20, 2026Downdetector showed hundreds of reports of problems at other businesses including Rightmove, Royal Mail, Screwfix and DPD.
- Oct 20, 2026By midday Google reported engineering teams had restored full service availability for europe-west2.
Who’s saying what
- Official
- Google Cloud said it was investigating elevated errors and intermittent network failures in europe-west2, apologized to those affected, and said teams were working to restore full availability.
- Official
- Revolut said all customers' money and data were safe and that it had been working to fix the issue since it was identified that morning.
- Caution
- HSBC said it would monitor the situation, which it noted was also affecting other organisations.
Still unverified
It is unclear whether outages reported elsewhere in Europe are connected to the London outage. Google gave no further detail on the cause in its status page update, and reports that millions of Revolut customers were unable to access accounts or make card payments, and that London-based infrastructure was affected, were described as "reportedly".