Will the US government release the alien files?

For much of the last century, Americans have imagined that if you came across aliens on Earth, they would ask you to take them to your leader. However, in 2026, it’s more likely that your leaders might take you to them instead.

On Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon is “working on” declassifying any alien- and UFO-related files, after President Trump last Thursday announced he would order US agencies to “begin the process of identifying and releasing” government documents associated with “extraterrestrial life.”

Trump’s focus on the issue seems to have been catalyzed by comments made by former President Obama the week before, who said that aliens are “real” in a podcast published February 14. While Obama quickly added during the interview that he hadn’t actually seen them, and later clarified his comments, that hasn’t stopped people online from probing further.

51 Questions

Traders reacted quickly to the news, with tens of millions of dollars traded on prediction market contracts tied to whether the US will confirm this year that aliens exist.

As of Wednesday morning, the market-implied probability of the US confirming we have extraterrestrial peers before 2027 sat at about 24%, having peaked at 29% on February 20.

Of course, people believing that information on alien intelligence is being withheld by the government is one of the oldest conspiracies in America’s seemingly ever-expanding book.

Following a patchwork of incidents considered suspicious by some — from the Roswell incident in 1947 to the declassification of Area 51 over six decades later — and in light of some good old-fashioned statistical reasoning, more than half (56%) of US adults overall reported thinking that aliens probably (38%) or definitely (18%) exist in a YouGov survey conducted last November.

Compared with findings from YouGov’s 2022 survey, even as more US adults have leaned away from certainty on alien life, a greater share in 2025 thought they “probably” exist — or at least considerably greater than the cohort who believe that Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster exist.

Identifying flying objects

Similar polls from Gallup and Pew Research conducted in recent years indicate that Americans had a significant degree of faith in the possibility of extraterrestrials even before being presented with concrete evidence.

Now, there’s a chance of seeing proof... though some scientists remain skeptical. Sean Kirkpatrick, a former top UFO investigator for the Department of Defense, told CBS News: “There are going to be unsatisfied people... Nothing would have made me happier in that job but to have discovered alien technology and rolled it out. I don’t expect to see anything new.”