UFO files release 3, June 12, 2026

The third batch of government UFO files, published on June 12, 2026. Heavy on orb sightings, from a Zimbabwe airport in 2008 to a pond in 2024.

The short answer

Release 3 of the UFO files came out on June 12, 2026. The Department of War published it at war.gov/UFO. CBS News counted 53 documents, 10 images, 6 videos and 3 NASA audio recordings, many of them reports of glowing orbs. Nothing in the release says any object was non-human.

The department said war.gov/UFO had passed 1.7 billion hits worldwide since May 8, 2026. Every release also sits in the Disclosure Ledger, and the program is set out on the PURSUE files page.

Release 3 at a glance

Date: June 12, 2026
Released by: The Department of War, in a statement from chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell.
Where: war.gov/UFO, filed as Release 03
Files: 53 documents, 10 images, 6 videos and 3 NASA audio recordings, according to CBS News. The department’s release page gives download sizes, not a file count.
Download size: Documents 826 MB, videos 4.6 GB, as listed on war.gov/UFO
Program: PURSUE, the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters

What the department said

Sean Parnell’s statement confirmed the third release, repeated that files would keep coming on a rolling basis, and said war.gov/UFO had received more than 1.7 billion hits worldwide since its launch. It said the department and its partners were working on the next release. It made no claim about what any object in the batch was.

Department of War statement (source, opens in a new tab)war.gov/UFO (source, opens in a new tab)

What was in release 3

These are the files news outlets singled out on the day. They are a sample, not the whole batch, and the descriptions are the outlets’ summaries of the records.

“Orbs Over the Pond,” October 2024, northeastern United States: a plasma-like sphere reported hovering about 2,700 feet above a pond for roughly 45 minutes (CBS News).
October 2023, western United States: five federal law enforcement accounts of orbs. One witness described smaller orbs coming out of a larger orange light, like “grapes being expelled from a basketball” (CBS News).
July 2008, Harare International Airport, Zimbabwe: a CIA report sent to the White House describing a disc-like object with rotating lights (CBS News).
2022, Colorado Springs: a “potato”-shaped, opalescent object. An intelligence analysis assessed with low confidence that it may have been sunlight scattering off snow on Cheyenne Mountain and lighting up clouds (CBS News).
Material on the 1952 to 1953 CIA scientific panel on flying saucers, which concluded they posed no physical threat (CBS News).

cbsnews.com (source, opens in a new tab)

Exhibit · Release 3 claim checked

The claim, checked

The line about this release that travels furthest, set against what the record supports.

UNRESOLVED
“Orbs launching smaller orbs prove intelligent craft are here.”
What the record shows
The accounts are real records of what federal officers said they saw in October 2023. They are witness descriptions, and the release attaches no finding about what the lights were. The record shows no craft. It also rules nothing out. It is one of the cases the department calls unresolved: it cannot say what was seen. Until better data turns up, the honest position is that nobody knows.
cbsnews.com (source, opens in a new tab)war.gov (source, opens in a new tab)

Reading release 3

Two files in this batch show how analysts work when they do have a lead. The Colorado Springs object got a low-confidence explanation: sunlight on mountain snow. The Harare report raised a question in its own text, whether the object was a foreign reconnaissance device or something else, and gave no answer. A question written into a report is not a conclusion.

If you see lights like these yourself, the file on orbs in the sky covers the ordinary causes first.

What it does not show

It does not show that any orb was a craft, and it does not show a government conclusion about the orb reports. The one analysis described in the coverage leaned toward an ordinary cause, with low confidence. For the claims made about all six releases together, read did the UFO files confirm aliens?

Sources

File counts are news tallies, credited to the outlet that made them. The department’s own pages were read through a mirror of its release text and a copy of war.gov/UFO, because war.gov blocked direct requests.

The other releases

PURSUE has published six releases so far. The next one came out on July 10, 2026. The one before came out on May 22, 2026.

← Release 2, May 22, 2026 All PURSUE releases Release 4, July 10, 2026 →

Files are not the first minute.

If something shows up over your street tonight, no archive will tell you what to do. Ten questions find your role.

Find your role All PURSUE releases