McMenamins Hotel Oregon UFO Festival

The McMenamins Hotel Oregon UFO Festival was established in 2000 and has been an annual occurrence in McMinnville since that time, with the exception of 2020 when it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.^[1][2] The event has been sponsored since its inception by McMenamins.^[1]

The festival was founded to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the McMinnville UFO photographs, a local UFO hoax^[3][4][5] perpetrated in 1950.^[6] McMenamins Hotel Oregon first started hosting the festival after McMenamins historian Tim Hills discovered that the anniversary of the photographs was approaching in 2000.^[7]

In 2016, the festival first organized around a single theme, the Phoenix Lights event of 1997 — an incident in UFO history during which members of the public in Phoenix, Arizona were unable to positively identify a pilot training exercise and some believed it to be overflights of alien spacecraft.^[7][8][9] Speakers that year included Peter Davenport; Lynne Kitei, who authored a book on the subject; event witness Sue Watson; and, Phoenix city councilor Frances Barwood.^[7]

Participants and attendees at past festivals have included Luis Elizondo, David Paulides, Jeremy Corbell, George Knapp, George Noory, Stanton Friedman, Whitley Streiber, Travis Walton, Bob Lazar, Nick Pope, Roger Leir, Irena Scott, Linda Moulton Howe, Deep Prasad, Budd Hopkins, and others.^[10][11][12]

By 2021, the festival was attracting an annual attendance of up to 10,000 persons.^[13] As of 2025, it is the largest UFO enthusiast event in Oregon, United States; the second-largest UFO event in the United States after the Roswell, New Mexico UFO festival; and the largest annual event in McMinnville.^[10][14]

Past events at the festival have included a pet costume contest, an alien costume parade, an "Alien Abduction Dash 5K" run, music, and UFO trivia competitions.^[15][16][17]

• Cardwell UFO Festival