Former opposition legislator Dinorah Figuera arrived in Venezuela on August 6 at the head of a delegation of ex-deputies from the 2015 National Assembly, with US backing, to begin talks with the Maduro government on a political transition; Figuera said the first results of the dialogue are expected in December 2026
Chile's President José Antonio Kast and Venezuela's government of Delcy Rodríguez agreed on July 30 to restore consular services and establish a roadmap toward full diplomatic normalization; Chile's main condition was a mechanism to facilitate the deportation of irregular Venezuelan migrants, a campaign priority for Kast; ties were severed in early 2025 following the disputed July 2024 Venezuelan election
A US federal court in New York set June 1, 2027 as the start date for the trial of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges; Maduro appeared in court for the third time since his capture in Caracas in January 2026, while the US permitted Venezuela to fund his legal defence despite existing sanctions
Venezuela's acting president Delcy Rodríguez on July 13 named Félix Plasencia, her representative in Washington since February, as the head of a new merged Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, replacing incumbent foreign minister Yván Gil; the merger brings diplomatic and commercial functions under a single ministry as Caracas pursues a managed engagement with the US.
A 159,500 sq km territory comprising two-thirds of Guyana's landmass, claimed by Venezuela since 1962, currently before the International Court of Justice.
A structural vulnerability in personalist autocracies globally: concentrated power leaves no organic succession mechanism, generating crises when leaders die, fall ill, or are forcibly removed.
Venezuela's overlapping political, economic, and humanitarian emergency, rooted in two decades of Chavista rule, escalated into US military intervention in January 2026 and a catastrophic earthquake response in June.
Venezuela holds the world's largest proven oil reserves but produces a fraction of its peak output, making its recovery the most consequential upstream story in the Western Hemisphere.
The US-led multilateral sanctions regime targeting Venezuela's government and state oil company PDVSA, now in partial rollback after Maduro's January 2026 capture.
A Trump-aligned lawyer edges leftist Iván Cepeda by under 1%, ending the Petro era and realigning Bogotá toward Washington; post-election clashes in three cities
A M7.2 at 22:05 UTC and a M7.5 shortly after struck Sucre state; PAGER red alert flags an 87% chance fatalities cross 1,000
First US strike killing a designated-terrorist leader in the hemisphere, run jointly with Delcy Rodríguez's post-Maduro government
The Hague weighs the 1899 boundary while Caracas swears in a governor of the territory it doesn't administer and Guyana arms up
Washington has taken at least seven Venezuela-linked tankers while issuing fresh general licences for a transition government
Sworn in under Article 233 following the January US raid, she extends a hand to Trump while insisting Maduro is still the only president