Belgium's UFO hotline received 223 reported sightings last year. This is a slight increase compared to 2022, when there were 217 sightings. Reports of planets or stars top the list, but sightings that could be explained as a so-called “skytracer” are also on the increase.
Last year there were forty reported sightings involving a planet or a star. This is a significant increase compared to 2022. The number of UFO reports caused by spotlights/skytracers rose to 23 in 2023. There was a downward trend in the number reports that did not provide sufficient data for further investigation. There were 39 such reports in 2023.
Other explanations for reported sightings included satellites or the International Space Station (33), aircraft or helicopters (31), meteors or space debris (7), birds or insects (6) and drones (5).
With 61 sightings Antwerp Province was the provinces from which the most reported sightings came.
Although reports to the UFO Hotline can be made by people anywhere in Belgium as it is a Dutch-language platform almost all the reports it receives come from Flanders. It’s Francophone equivalent that is managed by Cobeps (The Belgian Committee for the study of space phenomena) received 48 reported UFO sightings in 2023.