The 26 July Movement (Spanish: Movimiento 26 de julio; M-26-7) was a Cuban vanguard revolutionary organization and later a political party led by Fidel Castro.

The movement's name commemorates the failed 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, part of an attempt to overthrow the dictator Fulgencio Batista.

This base defeated the troops of Batista on 31 December 1958, setting into motion the Cuban Revolution and installing a government led by Manuel Urrutia Lleó.

The movement's main objectives were distribution of land to peasants, nationalization of public services, industrialization, honest elections, and large-scale education reform.

The original core of the group was organized around the attack on the Moncada Barracks, merged with the National Revolutionary Movement led by Rafael García Bárcena and with a majority of the Orthodox Youth.

[8]: 22–23 On 2 December 1956, 82 men landed in Cuba, having sailed in the boat Granma from Tuxpan, Veracruz, Mexico ready to organize and lead a revolution.

It ended in January 1959, after the right-wing Dictator Batista fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic, in the early hours of New Year's Day when the Movement's forces marched into Havana.

Batista launched an offensive of 10,000 with air and land support to encircle and destroy the guerrillas hidden in the Sierra between April and August 1958, this campaign ended in a decisive failure for the development of the conflict.

Sabotage and the dissemination of propaganda were key parts of the M-26-7's strategy in both the urban and rural theaters of operation and were used to generate an atmosphere of crisis and to destabilize the public and economic order of the Batista regime.

[15][16] Both domestic and international propaganda efforts were aimed at informing audiences of the goals and policies of the M-26-7 and glorifying the lives and exploits of the guerrilla fighters to generate sympathy for the movement.

[17] The M-26-7 divided its operations between the rural guerrillas, who were based in the Sierra Maestra mountains, and the urban underground, which consisted mostly of middle-class and professional Cubans living in towns and cities.

He also created six separate sections of the M-26-7 which were responsible for organization, labor outreach, civic resistance among the middle class, sabotage activities and an urban militia, propaganda, and a treasury to raise funds.

[23] In addition, the urban underground organized worker strikes as well as patriotic clubs for Cuban exiles in the United States, which provided funds for the purchasing of arms and ammunition.

Once it was learned that Cuba would adopt a strict Marxist–Leninist political and economic system, opposition was raised not only by dissident party members, but by the United States as well.

[29] In April 1961, a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles and dissidents, including former supporters of the M-26-7, launched the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs Invasion against Cuba, shortly after Castro had declared the revolution socialist.

[33] Castro and the M-26-7 also emphasized racial integration as a key platform of the movement, and after Batista's overthrow, the M-26-7 quickly desegregated public spaces and implemented reforms, such as the redistribution of land and improved government education and medical services, that disproportionately benefited the Afro-Cuban population.

Celebrations involving community mobilizations and programs, reenactments, and recitations occur on the local and national level each year to honor the Moncada Barracks attack and the role of the M-26-7 in overthrowing the Batista regime.