The Empire State has recorded 8,314 UFO sightings since 1974, or one for every 1,003 residents. Delaware takes the top spot.New York has moved up two spots to third place among the states most likely to suffer alien abduction in the United States, according to Casino.ca’s annual rankings published on March 20 to coincide with National Alien Abduction Day. Gambling Guide compiled the list by sifting through 150,000 sighting entries on the National UFO Reporting Center covering the period between 1974 and 2026, to calculate the number of UFO sightings per capita in all fifty states, cross-referencing them with social media data for details of the sightings. The list comes at a moment of renewed public interest in UFOs and extraterrestrial life, just weeks after President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to release classified government files on extraterrestrial life and UFOs, and just days after two new federal government website domains related to aliens were registered by a US agency, sparking fresh speculation about what the government is preparing to reveal.
ranking
Delaware takes the top spot this year, moving up from fourth place last year, with 1,097 reported sightings since 1974, one for every 928 residents, and frequent reports of mysterious flying cylinders with flashing lights above homes. Washington state, which held the top spot last year, has slipped to second place with 7,595 cases, or one for every 977 residents.
UFO hotspots across America/casino.ca
The number of sightings in New York puts it in third place at 8,314, with recent reports including one witness describing “a white, Tic-Tac-shaped object in the sky” and another reporting “a silver sphere flying overhead”. A trio of mysterious luminous points were also seen hovering over Corona, Queens, which coincidentally was the location of the climactic final scene of the 1997 science fiction film Men in Black, sparking a new wave of online speculation.The overall top ten is as follows: Delaware, one scene per 928 residents; Washington, one per 977; New York, one per 1,003; Oregon, one per 1,054; Florida, one per 1,102; Texas, one per 1,119; Montana, one per 1,125; Vermont, one per 1,158; New Mexico, one per 1,169; and Georgia, one per 1,260.Nevada, home of Area 51 and long associated with UFO mythology, ranked 19th with one sighting per 1,657 residents. California ranked 22nd, with one per 1,708. Louisiana is the state least likely to have a close encounter, with one sighting per 3,464 residents.
what do the numbers mean
Across the United States, Casino.ca identified 187,870 UFO sightings reported since 1974, making the national probability of alien abduction about one in 1,770, or 0.056 percent. For context, the chance of being attacked by a shark is approximately one in 11.5 million. Dennis Anderson, a former member of the Center for UFO Studies, attributed New York’s high sighting numbers primarily to population density, adding that the sheer number of people in the state means more residents are seeing things in the sky that they cannot easily identify. The data used in Casino.ca’s rankings was updated and verified as of March 11, 2026 and is based solely on sightings rather than any verified evidence of foreign activity. National Alien Abduction Day, observed on March 20, has no official government recognition.
Meanwhile, in Washington
The publication of the rankings coincides with a separate development that has further heightened the week’s supernatural conversation. Two federal website domains, Alien.gov and Aliens.gov, were registered by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on March 17. As of March 19, none of the sites are live. Asked about the domain, White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told USA TODAY: “Stay tuned!” The domains come less than a month after Trump said he would order federal agencies to release government files on extraterrestrial life and UFOs, former President Barack Obama said on a podcast with Brian Tyler Cohen that he believes extraterrestrial life exists but has never personally seen evidence of it.Trump criticized Obama for releasing what he described as “classified information.” Some UAP documents have already been made publicly available through the National Archives following legislation signed by former President Joe Biden in 2023, and Congress has held three hearings on the topic since that year. The federal government has not explained why the two domains were created.