Photo · RecordPhoto: the Pentagon, looking northeast toward the Potomac River and the Washington Monument. DoD photo by Master Sgt. Ken Hammond, U.S. Air Force, public domain.
What's documented: Every release date comes from the Department of War's own announcements. Every record count comes from the department's downloadable file list (its CSV), counted row by row. What stood out in each batch is attributed to the outlet that reported it.
Status: Ongoing. Release 07 (Oct. 23, 2026) is the latest tranche. Its record count and breakdown are still being checked; the department says it's already working on the next release.
Last checked: October 23, 2026, against war.gov/ufo, the release statements and the department's file list.
When was each batch of UFO files released?
All seven came out on a Friday. The Pentagon's statements give the dates but not the totals, so the record counts below are from the department's own file list.
| Release | Records | Date | Days since last |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | 158 | May 8, 2026 | (launch) |
| 02 | 64 | May 22, 2026 | 14 |
| 03 | 72 | June 12, 2026 | 21 |
| 04 | 40 | July 10, 2026 | 28 |
| 05 | 41 | Aug. 7, 2026 | 28 |
| 06 | 75 | Sept. 18, 2026 | 42 |
| 07 | being counted | Oct. 23, 2026 | 35 |
| Total (01-06) | 450 |
How we counted: war.gov's file server refused our direct download, so Releases 01 to 05 come from a copy of the department's file list that the Internet Archive saved on September 13, 2026. Release 06 comes from the current 450-row version, which the independent PURSUE UFO Tracker keeps byte-for-byte with its SHA-256 fingerprint. Every row from the September copy is still in the current one.
How many UFO files have been released?
450 records through Release 06, by the department's own list. Release 07's count will be added here once it's checked. CBS News, which counted each batch on the day it came out, got the same total by a different route: 162, 64, 72, 40, 41 and 71.
The two counts differ in two places, and both have a plain explanation.
- Release 01. CBS counted 162 files on May 8 (120 PDFs, 28 videos, 14 images). The department's list has 158 rows for that date. PURSUE UFO Tracker documented a May 11 revision that took the list from 161 rows to 158 without adding or removing a single file. Nine PDFs now appear under more than one row, each row carrying its own incident title.
- Release 06. CBS counted 71 files on September 18. The list now shows 75 rows for that date. According to the tracker's diffs, one more row appeared that afternoon, and three transcripts of Colorado police videos were added on September 24, all carrying the September 18 date.
So a "record" in the database isn't always one file. When you see a different number quoted somewhere, that's usually why.
What's in each release?
Here's the log: the newest tranche first, then the earlier ones in order. Agencies and file types come from the department's list. Highlights are attributed.
Release 07: Oct. 23, 2026
Record count: being checked. War.gov posted the seventh tranche on the morning of October 23, 35 days after Release 06. The department's statement, attributed to Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, called it "the seventh release of declassified and historical Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) files" and said the department and its partners "are actively working on the next release." It didn't give a count, and the independent tracker hadn't indexed the new rows when we checked, so we haven't counted it yet.
Early coverage gives a first look. The New York Post reported, from the released files, an FBI report and a Department of War memo describing black triangular objects seen over redacted U.S. military sites on at least three occasions in the past year. Observers estimated one moved 1.5 miles in three seconds, or about 1,800 mph, according to the Post's reading of the FBI report. No photos were released, only sketches, and the locations and dates are redacted.
The Post also reported 2010 records on Skinwalker Ranch, including hair collected from a barbed-wire fence for DNA analysis, plus files on sightings near California's Catalina Island and a 1960s NASA document on handling space fragments. Those descriptions are the Post's; we'll check them against the department's own list and descriptions before adding them to the counts. For the ranch's history, see Skinwalker Ranch: what's documented.
Release 01: May 8, 2026
158 records: 79 from the Department of War, 57 from the FBI, 15 from NASA and 7 from the State Department. By type: 116 PDFs, 27 videos, 14 images and one audio file. The list marks 105 of the 158 as redacted.
The launch announcement named the White House, ODNI, the Department of Energy, AARO, NASA, the FBI and "additional components of U.S. intelligence agencies" as partners. It also said "many of the materials have not yet been analyzed for resolution of any anomalies."
CBS News reported infrared clips from 2020 to 2026, including a 2023 report from Greece describing multiple "90-degree turns" at about 80 miles per hour; an FBI composite sketch of an "apparent ellipsoid bronze metallic object"; an Apollo 17 photo of "three 'dots' in a triangular formation"; and the FBI's 1947-1968 "flying disc" case file.
That FBI file includes the 1947 Dallas memo about an object "purporting to be a flying disc" recovered near Roswell, which the memo described as hexagonal and hung from a balloon. We cover that record in what happened at Roswell.
Release 02: May 22, 2026
64 records: 52 Department of War, 7 NASA, 3 Department of Energy, 1 CIA and 1 from ODNI. By type: 51 videos, 7 audio files and 6 PDFs.
This was the video batch. The department's statement said war.gov/ufo had passed "over 1 billion hits worldwide" in two weeks.
The NASA audio comes from Mercury flights in 1961-1963 and from Apollo 12 and Apollo 17. CBS reported astronauts describing "fireflies" and "snowflakes," and quoted the Pentagon's note that NASA "later determined" the fireflies were frozen condensation coming off the spacecraft. The ODNI record, listed as a narrative from a senior intelligence official, is the 2025 first-hand account CBS said left the officer and his crew "virtually speechless."
Release 03: June 12, 2026
72 records: 29 FBI, 18 CIA, 12 Department of War, 11 NASA, plus one each labeled "Intelligence Community Agency" and "U.S. Government." By type: 53 PDFs, 10 images, 6 videos and 3 audio files.
The centerpiece is a set of five narrative statements and an AARO case update on what the files call the "Western United States Event" of 2023. CBS reported that five federal law enforcement special agents described two days of lights. One said smaller orbs were "being hatched from the larger very bright orange light."
The CIA material reaches back to the 1952-1953 Scientific Advisory Panel report, better known as the Robertson Panel. NASA added Gemini debriefings and a 1962 Gordon Cooper interview excerpt. The FBI added a 2022 Colorado Springs report, with a separate intelligence-community analysis of it.
The department said the site had now passed "over 1.7 billion hits."
Release 04: July 10, 2026
40 records: 28 Department of War, 7 NASA, 2 Department of Energy, 2 CIA and 1 FBI. By type: 19 videos, 14 PDFs, 4 audio files and 3 images.
The Department of Energy entries are a 1949 Los Alamos conference on aerial phenomena and a 2015 incident report from the Pantex Plant. NASA added Apollo 14 and Apollo 17 debriefings and three images of an unidentified object from shuttle mission STS-80 in 1996. Department of War paperwork includes "Range Fouler" debriefs from 2019 and 2020 and a 1948 Project Sign progress report.
Release 05: Aug. 7, 2026
41 records: 19 Department of War, 17 FBI, 2 CIA, 2 State Department and, for the first time, 1 from the Executive Office of the President. By type: 22 PDFs, 16 videos and 3 images.
The headline was six videos of one September 2021 encounter in the Gulf of Oman. CBS reported that the clips were filmed on cellphones pointed at the screens of an AC-130J gunship, and that the intelligence report says the crew "observed approximately 25 instances of UAPs."
The batch also holds two 1963 State Department cables from Brazil, the National Aeronautics and Space Council's inquiry into the same Bahia incident (the council sat in the Executive Office of the President), a 1965 CIA report of an object near Puerto Rico, and a 1947 intelligence review of "Ghost Rocket" incidents.
CBS also reported a former military pilot's FBI interview about a silent triangle he said blocked out the stars over Bagram, Afghanistan, in 2002.
Release 06: Sept. 18, 2026
75 records: 67 Department of War and 8 under a new label, Local Law Enforcement. By type: 59 PDFs, 15 videos and one audio file. The list marks 67 of the 75 as redacted.
Most of it, 44 records, is paperwork from the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, which the Defense Intelligence Agency ran from 2008 to 2012. That includes 37 "Defense Intelligence Reference Documents" on warp drives, wormholes and invisibility cloaking. CBS reported that all 37 were already public through FOIA, but the new copies restore details such as the names of the offices that wrote them. The Pentagon's own notes say they "should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed."
AARO has said the same program also investigated a property in Utah; the description fits Skinwalker Ranch, which we lay out in Skinwalker Ranch: what's documented.
The batch also has the 1952 Tremonton, Utah, film and its Project Blue Book file, and an hour-long 1952 recording of Capt. Edward Ruppelt, who went on to run Blue Book. He said about 20 percent of 800 reports were "very good reports offered by very reliable people" and that "just absolutely no conclusions can be drawn."
The eight Colorado records are four police cellphone videos and their transcripts, dated October 2023 and January 2024 in the department's list.
Why are the UFO files being released now?
Because the president told the Pentagon to release them. On February 19, 2026, President Trump posted that he would direct the Secretary of War and other agencies "to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs)." War.gov quotes that post as the program's start.
The program's full name is the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. The Department of War runs it with support from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The department calls it a review of "tens of millions of records, many existing only on paper, spanning many decades," with "tranches posted every few weeks." If you're wondering why the government says "UAP" now, see why "UFO" became "UAP".
On September 14, four days before Release 06, the department issued a legal waiver. It lets current and former service members, civilian staff and contractors share UAP-related defense information with PURSUE representatives without breach-of-agreement penalties under their nondisclosure agreements. It covers only what they tell the PURSUE team, not the press or the public. Whether it changes what shows up in later tranches is an open question.
What does "unresolved" mean in the UFO files?
It means the government couldn't decide what was seen, usually for lack of data. War.gov's wording: "The materials archived here are unresolved cases, meaning the government is unable to make a definitive determination on the nature of the observed phenomena." It adds that this "can occur for a variety of reasons, including a lack of sufficient data."
So "unresolved" isn't a finding that something is unexplainable. And the May 8 announcement said many files hadn't yet been analyzed at all. Solved cases are left out on purpose; the department says it reports those separately, as the law requires.
Are aliens confirmed to exist?
No. Nothing in the first six tranches confirms alien craft, nothing reported so far from the seventh does either, and the government doesn't claim it does. What the files confirm is that pilots, sensors and agents keep reporting things nobody identified.
The Pentagon's line is that the public can "make up their own minds." CBS noted on May 8 that the military said in a 2024 report there's no evidence any government investigation has confirmed extraterrestrial life. Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO's former director, told ABC News there was "nothing unexpected" in the first release. EarthSky noted after the third release that none of the batches had mentioned physical evidence.
Some of the material isn't new, either. Reuters reported on day one that analysts said many of the documents had already been made public. Release 06's 37 research papers are the clearest example.
Where can I view the released UFO files?
At war.gov/ufo. The database filters by release, agency and file type, and each release has bulk downloads. They're big: Release 02's videos alone are listed at 5.6 GB.
A few habits help:
- Read the description before the video. The notes give the date, place, sensor and what the crew reported. The clip alone usually can't. Most clips are distant blurs, which is normal on these sensors; we explain why in why UFO photos are always blurry.
- Check the date. A 1940s intelligence review and a 2025 sensor report sit side by side, and they're very different kinds of evidence.
- Expect redactions. For Release 01, CBS reported, the department said it withheld things like witness identities and the locations of government facilities, and made no redactions about "the nature or existence of any encounter."
- Look for the solved version. AARO publishes its own case analyses, and some famous footage came out years before PURSUE, like the Navy clip in our Tic Tac case file. Other viral footage has never been authenticated; see did a Hellfire missile really bounce off a UFO?
- Keep the claim and the evidence apart. A witness saying an object was 500 feet wide is a record of an estimate, not a measurement.
What isn't in the UFO files?
Solved cases, private finds and anything still classified. PURSUE only posts unresolved government records, so for the full picture you need two other tracks.
The first is AARO's annual reporting. Its fiscal 2025 report covers June 2, 2024 to May 30, 2025. AARO received 319 UAP reports in that period and resolved 114 of them, plus 256 older cases, for 370 in all. It put 191 new reports in an "active archive" for lack of data, and a new modeling tool let it close 238 as "satellite flaring." That's a big reason we wrote how to spot a Starlink satellite train.
The second is the National Archives' Record Group 615, the UAP Records Collection Congress created in the 2024 defense authorization act. Agencies including the FAA, ODNI, NSA, the FBI and the Air Force have transferred records there.
Cases that went viral outside government channels aren't part of PURSUE at all. A search of the 450 records through Release 06 turns up nothing on the 2011 sonar image we cover in the Baltic Sea anomaly, and nothing on the S-4 claims in our Bob Lazar file. For what the government has spent on all this, see how much the U.S. spends on UFOs.
Is there a Release 07? When is the next release?
Yes. Release 07 posted on October 23, 2026, and war.gov now lists it as the latest. The department hasn't announced a date for Release 08. Its statement says the department and its partners "are actively working on the next release of UAP files."
The gaps so far were 14, 21, 28, 28, 42 and 35 days, and every release landed on a Friday. That isn't a schedule, and nobody outside the Pentagon has a date. When Release 08 posts, it goes at the top of this log.
If you've seen something yourself, here's how to report a UAP sighting.
Sources
- U.S. Department of War: Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), war.gov/ufo
- U.S. Department of War: "Department of War Releases Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Files in Historic Transparency Effort," May 8, 2026
- U.S. Department of War: "Department of War Publishes Second Release of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Files on WAR.GOV/UFO," May 22, 2026
- U.S. Department of War: "Department of War Publishes Third Release of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Files on WAR.GOV/UFO," June 12, 2026
- U.S. Department of War: "Department of War Publishes Fourth Release of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Files on WAR.GOV/UFO," July 10, 2026
- U.S. Department of War: "Department of War Publishes Fifth Release of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Files on WAR.GOV/UFO," Aug. 7, 2026
- U.S. Department of War: "Department of War Issues Legal Waiver to Authorize Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Disclosures to PURSUE," Sept. 14, 2026
- U.S. Department of War: "Department of War Publishes Sixth Release of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Files on WAR.GOV/UFO," Sept. 18, 2026
- U.S. Department of War (statement attributed to Sean Parnell), seventh PURSUE release, Oct. 23, 2026, as reprinted by Mirage News
- New York Post: "Mysterious black triangles spotted over secret US military bases, latest UFO file dump reveals," Oct. 23, 2026
- U.S. Department of War: PURSUE file list (uap-data.csv), Internet Archive copy saved Sept. 13, 2026 (Releases 01-05)
- PURSUE UFO Tracker (independent): "PURSUE Changes Log," with the current 450-row file list and its revision history
- All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO): "Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), Volume I," released March 2024 (AAWSAP section)
- All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO): Fiscal Year 2025 Consolidated Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena
- National Archives: Record Group 615, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection
- CBS News: "Pentagon begins releasing new UFO files, unveiling dozens of photos, videos and documents," May 8, 2026
- CBS News: "Pentagon releases more UFO files: 'Speechless after these observations,'" May 22, 2026
- CBS News: "Pentagon releases 3rd batch of UFO files, detailing mysterious orb sightings," June 12, 2026
- CBS News: "Pentagon releases new batch of UFO files: 'Unlike anything I had seen,'" July 10, 2026
- CBS News: "Pentagon releases new batch of UFO files: 'Did you see that?,'" Aug. 7, 2026
- CBS News: "Pentagon releases more UFO files, including documents on secretive military program," Sept. 18, 2026
- ABC News: "Pentagon releases declassified UFO files from various federal agencies," May 8, 2026
- Reuters: "Trump releases government UFO files, more expected," May 8, 2026
- EarthSky: "3rd batch of Pentagon UAP files: Orbs and more," June 2026
- Wikimedia Commons: "The Pentagon US Department of Defense building.jpg," DoD photo by Master Sgt. Ken Hammond, public domain
Questions people ask
How many UFO files have been released?
Through Release 06, the Department of War's own file list holds 450 records: 158, 64, 72, 40, 41 and 75. Release 07 posted on October 23, 2026, and its count is still being checked. CBS News's day-of counts for the first six reach the same 450 total but split differently (162 in Release 01 and 71 in Release 06), because some files sit under more than one row and a few rows were added after release day.
When were the Pentagon UFO files released?
In seven tranches, all on Fridays: May 8, May 22, June 12, July 10, August 7, September 18 and October 23, 2026. Each one went up at war.gov/ufo with a short statement from Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell or, for the first, a launch announcement.
Where can I view the released UFO files?
At war.gov/ufo, the Department of War's PURSUE site. It has a searchable database you can filter by release, agency and file type, plus bulk downloads for each release.
Has PURSUE Release 07 come out?
Yes. Release 07 posted at war.gov/ufo on October 23, 2026, 35 days after Release 06. The department hasn't announced a date for Release 08 and says it is actively working on the next release.
Why are the UFO files being released now?
President Trump posted on February 19, 2026, that he would direct the Secretary of War and other agencies to identify and release government files on UAP and UFOs. The Department of War runs the effort, called PURSUE, with support from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Do the UFO files confirm aliens exist?
No. The files are cases the government says it couldn't resolve, often for lack of data. The Pentagon doesn't claim any of them show alien craft, and AARO says every case it has resolved turned out to be something ordinary, such as balloons, satellites, birds, aircraft or drones.
Corrections: if something here is wrong, tell us and we'll fix it and say so on this page.