Two words that mean different things for Cuba
An apostille and a legalisation certificate look similar on the page but come from different logic. An apostille lets one country's stamp stand alone abroad because both sides signed the same treaty. Cuba never signed it, so document legalisation for Cuba works through a longer chain instead — the UK office's mark, then a separate Cuba-facing stage on top of it.
That second stage is not a formality tacked on for its own sake. It exists because Cuba's own authority wants to look at the record itself rather than rely on a foreign country's stamp, and nothing about the UK process can stand in for that separate review, however thorough the UK stage happens to be on its own terms.
Why Cuba isn't on the Hague list
The United Kingdom belongs to the Hague Convention; Cuba has never joined it. An apostille from United Kingdom to Cuba consequently isn't a certificate that exists — the FCDO's Milton Keynes office issues a legalisation mark for this route instead, built specifically for a destination outside the Convention.
Family matters make up a large share of what travels this route: a marriage certificate for a spouse relocating, a birth certificate settling a family record, or a death certificate closing an estate. None of that changes which certificate gets issued or how many stages the record needs to pass through.
Starting the route in London
A civil record with a missing original begins at Westminster Register Office, which supplies a fresh certified copy so the true original is never the item risked in the post. A record already in hand skips that first step and moves straight to the national stage.
From there, an apostille issued in London for use in Cuba is something of a misnomer — what actually gets attached is the FCDO's legalisation mark, sent through the same single postal address, PO Box 6255, MK10 1XX, that every UK city uses for this process.
What it costs and how long the London share takes
The legalisation mark that stands in for an apostille for Cuba costs £45 for standard postal handling, or £40 per record for a registered business choosing next-day handling. Whatever Cuba's own process costs at its end is set by a different body and doesn't appear in either UK figure.
Standard turnaround is up to 25 working days once the FCDO has the record, plus post on both legs of the journey. Next-day handling, reserved for a registered business, gets the record back the following working day, though the Cuba-facing stage that follows runs on its own separate clock that this figure doesn't cover.
Putting the whole package together
So what you need for an apostille for Cuba really comes down to two pieces: a certified UK record carrying the FCDO's legalisation mark, and the Cuba-specific stage that follows once that mark exists. Skipping straight to the second piece isn't possible — the sequence only runs one way, whatever deadline is pushing the application along.
None of this changes the record's own wording. A certificate legalised through this route says exactly what it said before either mark was added; only its standing changes, and only once both stages, not one, are behind it. The record travelling out of London and the one finally accepted in Cuba are, on the page, the same document throughout — nothing is rewritten along the way, only stamped and passed on.
It also doesn't matter which London borough the applicant lives in. The FCDO's national office treats a record posted from any part of the capital identically; the only step with a genuinely local character is Westminster Register Office replacing a missing civil certificate, and even that is skipped whenever the original is already safely in hand rather than lost.