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On November 9, 2018, commercial pilots flying for British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and a Norwegian carrier reported very bright, fast-moving objects passing their aircraft off the southwest coast of Ireland. Shannon Air Traffic Control confirmed nothing showed on military radar, and the Irish Aviation Authority opened a formal investigation under its confidential occurrence reporting process.

Between 2000 and 2010, the international EMBLA research program, led by Østfold University College (Norway) and the Italian National Research Council, returned to Hessdalen with modern spectroscopy and image analysis. Researchers measured radiant power up to 19 kW from free-floating luminous bodies and published peer-reviewed findings in Acta Astronautica confirming the phenomena are not artifacts of instrumentation.

Spain began declassifying Air Force UFO files in 1992 and completed a staged public release through 1997, depositing physical copies in the Central Library of the Air Force. The Manises 1979 incident file, declassified August 1994, was among the most significant, including the Mirage F1 pilot's debriefing, radar logs from two separate tracking stations, and the airline crew's signed statements.

Following the 1989-1990 Belgian UFO wave, the Société belge d'étude des phénomènes spatiaux (SOBEPS) published a 500-page scientific report, Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique (1991), compiling approximately 2,600 witness accounts, gendarmerie files, and air force radar data, the most comprehensive official UFO wave report produced by any European nation.

On September 10, 1990, approximately 25 witnesses, including schoolchildren and a photojournalist, observed a spherical metallic object with legs hovering near Alfena, Portugal. The photojournalist Manuel Gomes captured four photographs; forensic examination by Portugal's CNIFO and later by NASA consultant Richard Haines found no evidence of tampering.

On March 30-31, 1990, the Belgian Air Force scrambled two F-16s from Beauvechain to intercept an unidentified radar return tracked by NATO ground stations. Chief of Operations General Wilfried De Brouwer publicly released the radar data at a NATO headquarters press conference on July 11, 1990.

On August 24, 1990, hundreds of tourists and residents across the German Baltic coast, including a school group of 40 boys and several teachers, observed and filmed multiple luminous spheres in Y-formation near Greifswald. The event was captured on videotape by independent witnesses and remains unexplained.

On November 29, 1989, at least 143 witnesses, including 13 on-duty police officers, reported a massive silent triangular craft with white lights at each corner hovering over Eupen, Belgium. The Belgian Gendarmerie formally documented the accounts the same night.

Since at least 1981, luminous unidentified objects have appeared regularly in the Hessdalen valley, Norway. A 1984 field expedition by Project Hessdalen deployed radar, magnetometers, seismographs, and spectrum analyzers over five weeks and recorded 53 separate phenomena, some simultaneously detected on radar while invisible in optical wavelengths.

On January 8, 1981, farmer Renato Nicolaï observed a disc-shaped object land briefly in his field near Trans-en-Provence, France. French government agency GEPAN collected soil samples within 24 hours and concluded ground had been compressed by 4-5 tons of pressure and heated to 300-600°C.

Italy's Aeronautica Militare formalised an OVNI investigation procedure in 1979 and has published annual case summaries on its official aeronautica.difesa.it website since 2001. Any citizen may file a report through the Carabinieri; the Italian Air Force investigates and logs cases that resist conventional explanation as confirmed OVNI sightings.

On November 11, 1979, Iberia/TAE Flight JK-297 made an emergency landing at Manises Airport near Valencia, Spain, the first documented case of a commercial aircraft diverting specifically because of a UFO. Captain Francisco Javier Lerdo de Tejada reported red lights approaching the aircraft on a collision course. A Spanish Air Force Mirage F1 scrambled from Albacete reached Mach 1.4 in pursuit before losing contact.

In 1977, France became the first nation to establish a permanent state agency dedicated to UAP investigation: GEPAN (later SEPRA, then GEIPAN), housed within the national space agency CNES. Over four decades GEIPAN analyzed roughly 3,000 cases from 8,000 testimonies, classifying approximately 7% as Category D, unexplained even after on-site investigation.

On June 22, 1976, hundreds of civilian and military witnesses across Tenerife, La Palma, La Gomera, and Gran Canaria observed a luminous sphere for more than 40 minutes. The entire crew of Spanish Navy corvette Atrevida filed official statements. The Spanish Air Force investigation concluded the phenomenon was a genuine 'Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon' and the full 100-page report was declassified in June 1994.

On August 29, 1967, a 13-year-old boy and his 9-year-old sister reported four small black beings rising into a hovering disc in a field near Cussac, France. The local gendarmerie investigated the same day, noting a sulfur odor and scorched grass at the site.

On July 1, 1965, lavender farmer Maurice Masse encountered an egg-shaped craft on six legs in his field near Valensole, France, accompanied by two small humanoid figures. The following day, gendarmes photographed and measured a cross-shaped ground impression 1.2 meters across. Lavender did not regrow on the spot until 1975.

On November 1, 1954, Rosa Lotti Dainelli, a farmer near Cennina in the province of Arezzo, Italy, reported encountering a metallic double-cone object in a field from which two child-sized humanoids emerged, spoke in an unrecognized language, took flowers and a stocking from her, and then departed. A deep hole was found at the site.

On October 27, 1954, play stopped at Florence's Artemio Franchi stadium as formations of silvery objects passed overhead, witnessed by approximately 10,000 spectators, players, and referee. Silvery filaments fell from the objects; samples collected by a University of Florence student were analyzed and found to contain boron, silicon, calcium, and magnesium, not spider silk.

Between May and December 1946, the Swedish Defence Staff logged approximately 2,000 sightings of cigar-shaped objects (the so-called 'ghost rockets', spökraketer) over Scandinavia. On October 10, 1946, the Defence Staff publicly stated that some 200 of the observations could not be explained as natural phenomena, Swedish aircraft, or imagination.