In short: on Monday, November 18, 2025, Cloudflare suffered a global outage that disrupted thousands of websites. Users across Latin America, Spain, and other regions reported widespread issues accessing platforms like X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, Slack, and League of Legends, among many others.
Introduction
A large portion of that disruption involved being stuck on a page labeled challenges.cloudflare.com, which normally verifies users aren’t bots. However, during the outage, even legitimate traffic was blocked, causing major access issues.
This article explains what happened, what challenges.cloudflare.com means, how to bypass it, and what users can do to stay online during these types of outages. We’ll also highlight the impact on Spanish-speaking countries and provide helpful guidance for future incidents.
⛔️ What is challenges.cloudflare.com and Why Are You Seeing It?
challenges.cloudflare.com is a domain that shows a security challenge when Cloudflare detects unusual or suspicious behavior. It may present a CAPTCHA, an IP verification, or a delay before loading the actual site.
During the November 18 outage, this security system failed under load, blocking millions of legitimate users. Common messages included:
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“Checking if the site connection is secure”
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“challenges.cloudflare.com refused to connect”
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“Err_connection_refused”
These indicate that Cloudflare’s verification layer couldn’t process the volume of requests.
✅ How to Unblock challenges.cloudflare.com
Try these actions to bypass or resolve the block:
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Switch to incognito mode or use a different browser.
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Change networks: try another Wi-Fi or switch to mobile data.
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Clear browser cache and cookies.
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Restart your router if you’re on a home network.
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Use the service’s official mobile app – these often bypass Cloudflare’s web protections.
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Avoid VPNs or proxies, which might trigger false positives.
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Wait and refresh the page. Once the servers recover, the system may return to normal.
These steps are helpful not just for this incident but also for future service disruptions.