Cloudflare Outage on February 20, 2026, Affects 15% of Network Due to Misconfigured Traffic Rule
On February 20, 2026, Cloudflare experienced a significant outage impacting 15% of its global network for 90 minutes due to a misconfigured rule in its Traffic Manager system. The outage, which began at 14:51 UTC, was caused by human error during a routine update that led to traffic withdrawal from multiple data centers. The incident affected customers across various services, resulting in billions of failed HTTP requests, especially in Western and Central Europe. Cloudflare is implementing remediation measures to prevent future occurrences.
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On February 20, 2026, Cloudflare's global network suffered a 90-minute outage affecting 15% of its capacity, triggered by a misconfigured rule in its Traffic Manager system. The incident started at 14:51 UTC due to an engineer's error during a routine update, which incorrectly deprioritized multiple data centers.
The outage led to billions of failed requests, primarily impacting users in Western and Central Europe. In response, Cloudflare is mandating peer reviews for rule changes, adding a blast radius preview tool, and restructuring data center naming conventions. The incident highlights systemic risks in concentrated internet infrastructure, prompting discussions about operational safeguards.
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