Case File · CIA · Cold War / Blue Book Era (1953-1969) Declassified June 12, 2026 · PURSUE Release 03

Unknown Flying Objects Observed Over Budapest, 1957 — CIA File

UFO Visual Sighting

This is a 1957 CIA Information Report regarding UFO sightings over Budapest. A more redacted version of this report has been available on CIA's public website.

1957
Budapest, Hungary
A grainy document with text about flying objects.
A grainy document with text about flying objects. · Source: declassified document

Incident Overview

In 1957, in Budapest, Hungary, CIA preserved a documentary record that was declassified and published on June 12, 2026 as part of the third tranche of the Department of War’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).

What the government released

This is a 1957 CIA Information Report regarding UFO sightings over Budapest. A more redacted version of this report has been available on CIA’s public website.

Status of the case

Records released under the PURSUE program are designated unresolved by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which means the federal government has not concluded the events were anomalous, has not concluded they were conventional, and has not ruled out either possibility. Where AARO has offered a likely source for an item — an infrared sensor aboard a military aircraft, a commercial camera, or a known optical effect — that attribution is the agency’s working assessment rather than a final determination. Conventional candidates such as drones, balloons, flares, satellites, parallax and forced-perspective artifacts, and ordinary aircraft remain on the table for any unresolved case absent better data than a single sensor pass or a witness recollection.

Sources