Google Cloud was down — 'Power event' took out Spotify, Revolut bank and more
Here's what happened in the UK
This is a different kind of disruption
Normally when it comes to outages, you can point to one service that's being impacted and causing problems.
This is Google Cloud Services — the backbone to a lot of online infrastructure, which are experiencing "elevated errors and intermittent network failures in europe-west2 region."
That is having a knock-on effect on services like banks like Revolut, postal services like DPD and NHS England.
We're just starting to see reports spike, so stay tuned for more.
This incident is currently active, as "multiple services" are experiencing issues. The engineering team is continuing to "investigate the issue," and we should be getting an update in just under 30 minutes.
Revolut confirms your 'money and data' are safe
We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services. We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe. We’ve been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning and apologise to anyone affected and for any inconvenience caused.October 20, 2026
Revolut has posted on X confirming the disruption. We're also receiving reports from readers that their Revolut online accounts are not opening.
This should give reassurance to anyone concerned about their finances. I'm currently reaching out for more information from other impacted banks.
Rightmove app also impacted
If you're looking for a new place to live and the Rightmove app isn't loading, it's not just you. Others are seeing this impact too as the outage count has spiked on Down Detector.
As I've just tested, the website on desktop still works, but is a little slow to load.
Halifax acknowledges the outage
@Keith02 We're aware some customers are having issues with our app and online. We're sorry about this and are working hard to fix it. If you need to you can still call us. We’ll let you know as soon as it’s back to normal. You can find our numbers here: https://t.co/yWa4FuZJAX ^DhanrajOctober 20, 2026
Halifax (and Lloyds by extension after the recently announced brand change) is also confirming that they're "aware some customers are having issues" both on the website and on the app.
In my own testing, the experience varies between the app not loading or taking a very long time to do so.
DPD confirms 'connection issues'
Service update We are aware of current connection issues affecting our website. Our team is working to get this resolved as quickly as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. #YourDeliveryExperts https://t.co/0F4UJsXDflOctober 20, 2026
Since DPD specifically mentions "our website," I don't believe this is hitting the actual delivery infrastructure. But we'll get to the bottom of it.
This disruption is not Europe-wide (according to Google)
Digging deeper into this outage, and you can see that the disruption "!" is on europe-west2 server, which is specific to London, UK.
NHS app confusion
So the NHS app issues may be localised to somewhere specific, as here in the midlands, my app is working just fine.
Or something may have happened to the Cloud outage. Stick with me as we find out.
In fact, standby. The outage reports are going down.
We're still trying to figure out what caused it, because this has been an odd outage with few reports on downdetector, but it is one that Google confirmed.
BREAKING: STATEMENT FROM GOOGLE
"Our engineering team continues to investigate the issue," the statement reads.
Beyond that, we're getting the same statement, which is that "multiple Google Cloud services" are experiencing "elevated errors and intermittent network failures."
That Google Cloud outage graph continues to dip
Now down to 162. The one hardest hit is Revolut at 692 and staying steady, but other services are heading back down too
A trip to Revolut's status page shows how much is hit. From sign ups to stock trading.
Most concerning is card payments and ATM withdrawals!
Court livestreams are down too
⚠️ We’re aware of an issue affecting Cloud Video Platform (CVP), used for some remote hearings. We’re working with our technology partners to restore service. If you’re having difficulty joining a hearing, please contact the court or tribunal dealing with your case. 👇October 20, 2026
There's a couple of high profile court cases going on in the UK right now. One against comedian Russell Brand and another against Stephen Christopher Yaxley (otherwise known as Tommy Robinson).
These streams have gone down because of the outage and the HM Courts and Tribunals Service has acknowledged it — saying that they are "working with our technology partners to restore service."
Cloud services are a risk - we need something better
The symmetry of this sometimes is always fascinating, because literally a year ago we had the far bigger AWS outage that knocked out half the internet.
I wrote it back then, and I'll say it again louder for the people in the back. When a cloud service sneezes, important services catch a cold.
Critical services like banking and healthcare should have a backup plan that doesn't rely on just one server.
Important note: We're seeing an AWS spike, but this current outage has nothing to do with AWS.
Read more:
BREAKING: A 'power event' caused the outage
We got a new statement from Google. With Downdetector report levels at a lower level than anticipated, my guess was this could have been a power surge that caused the outage.
Turns out I was right, as Google is saying this was "due to a power event." The issue has been mitigated, and Google's currently running a "partial mitigation to infrastructure services" over the next 30 minutes.
We'll update you when we see the result of this.
Slight uptick in outage reports
As the mitigation starts, we're seeing a small uptick in Google Cloud outage reports.
These situations may be unrelated.
Royal Mail tracking issues
From what we're hearing, the actual deliveries themselves are not impacted (please get in touch if you're seeing something different). But parcel tracking in my testing is either not loading or loading very slowly.
Prime Minister's office is talking with Google Cloud
As reported by Sky News, No. 10 is "aware" of today's outage, and an official spokesman has confirmed that they are "in contact" with Google Cloud Services to work on restoring services.
BREAKING: big outage spike for Spotify just emerged
I'm racing to understand what's going on here, but as Spotify uses Google Cloud Platform as its primary cloud infrastructure provider, I'm betting that this recent disruption may have taken the app down.
Here's your update on what's being impacted
We're seeing some specific services start to reduce in outage reports, such as Rightmove, NHS and banking apps like Halifax. But others are staying steady (like Revolut), and Spotify has just shot up outta nowhere.
First visual reports of Spotify outage coming through
is spotify down or something??October 20, 2026
BREAKING: Google Cloud set for "full recovery" by 2pm "tentatively"
Google's just posted another statement saying that the power event has been mitigated.
"We are seeing the recovery of services and are prioritizing the recovery of existing workloads."
They also set a time for "Full recovery of existing workloads," which is "tentatively" today at 6am PDT (2pm UK time).
BREAKING: 'recovery of services' underway
Final update from me, as we're seeing the end of this outage caused by what seems to be a power surge.
Google just posted another update confirming that they are seeing "recovering of services for most workloads in europe-west2."
It may take time for this recovery to be felt more widely across the services you regularly use, but this disruption seems to be over. I'll keep this live blog open just a little longer in case anything changes!
