For a long time, people didn’t really take UFOs or the idea of ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ (UAPs) seriously. But something happened in 2021 that made everyone sit up and take notice. U.S. intelligence services handed over a report to Congress that couldn’t explain most of the 143 sightings they looked at between November 2004 and March 2021. The only one they could explain was a balloon losing air! The plot thickened in 2023 when another report came out. This time it showed that out of 366 sightings from March 2021 to August 2022, 171 remained a mystery.

Global UFO sightings recorded from 1990 and 2022

All this talk about UFOs got people curious. Has there been a sudden increase in sightings? To find out, we can look at the data from the National UFO Reporting Center in the U.S. This center keeps a record of all the unexplained things people see in the sky from everywhere in the world.

There were some ups and downs in the number of sightings – fewer in 2018 and 2021, but the number started going up again after that. In 2022, people reported seeing UFOs around 5,000 times! This was less than the record numbers in 2014 and 2020 when there were 8,800 and 7,400 sightings respectively. But it’s clear that people are looking up at the sky and wondering again.

Source: Statista