Denver among the ten U.S. cities you’re most likely to see a UFO
May 12, 2026, 10:23 AM
It may not be Roswell or Area 51, but it turns out Denver has a rather robust UFO scene…
The Mile High City ranks No. 10 in the nation for UFO sightings, with 143 reported encounters since 2015, according to a new analysis of National UFO Reporting Center data published by the gambling research site BetUS and reported by Vice.
The study, which examined NUFORC filings from 2015 through February 2026, ranked U.S. cities by their concentration of reported sightings to identify geographic clusters and seasonal patterns. Phoenix led the country with 272 sightings, followed by New York City (266) and Las Vegas (250).
Denver’s 143 reports were enough to edge out every other city in the Mountain West except Boise, Idaho (210), and Albuquerque, New Mexico (162) — two cities with significantly smaller populations.
The top 10 cities for UFO sightings:
- Phoenix — 272
- New York — 266
- Las Vegas — 250
- Portland, Oregon — 218
- Los Angeles — 211
- Boise, Idaho — 210
- Albuquerque, New Mexico — 162
- Chicago — 148
- Seattle — 147
- Denver — 143
Colorado sits in a corridor of the American West that has produced unexplained aerial reports for decades. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, military personnel and civilians reported seeing glowing green fireballs tearing across the skies of southern Colorado and New Mexico, near the atomic laboratories at Los Alamos and Sandia. The sightings were frequent and alarming enough that the Air Force launched a formal investigation. The phenomenon was never conclusively explained.
More recently, the Pentagon has acknowledged the existence of unexplained aerial phenomena, released footage of encounters recorded by military pilots and established a formal office to investigate reports. The cultural stigma around reporting sightings has diminished significantly — a shift reflected in the BetUS data, which shows 65% of Americans now believe intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe.
The NUFORC database, which has collected reports since 1974, relies on voluntary, self-reported filings. That means the data reflects where people report sightings, not necessarily where unexplained aerial phenomena are most frequent. Cities with larger populations, higher awareness of the reporting center and greater cultural openness to UFO discussion will naturally produce more filings.
The full study, including an interactive tool to explore sightings by state, is available at betus.com.
