International UFO Congress

The International UFO Congress (IUFOC) is an annual conference focused on UAP research, alien abduction, exopolitics, and related subjects — founded in 1991 by Bob Brown and held annually in the American Southwest (originally Laughlin, Nevada; later Fountain Hills, Arizona) — one of the longest-running UFO conference series in the world and a primary venue for presentation of new research, whistleblower testimony, and contactee accounts in the UAP research community.

Founding and early history

The IUFOC was founded by Bob Brown in 1991, holding its inaugural sessions in Laughlin, Nevada — a small gaming resort town on the Colorado River that became the conference's home for its first decade. The Las Vegas venue made the event accessible to researchers and attendees from across the western United States and gave it a logistical footprint far larger than comparable conferences of the era. A narrator in the documentary series Alien Disclosure and Area 51 noted that Bill Uhouse, an avionics engineer who claimed to have worked on flight simulators for recovered extraterrestrial craft, "spoke at the International UFO Congress winter of 1991. His public testimony corroborates both Bob Lazar and Dan Burisch regarding ET vehicles being back engineered at Area 51." The inaugural 1991 event thus immediately established the IUFOC as a venue where defense and intelligence community whistleblowers would come forward alongside conventional researchers.

Jonathan Reed described receiving an invitation to present at the IUFOC in Laughlin, Nevada, as a significant milestone in the public emergence of his case: "We are going to, we were invited to speak at the International UFO Congress in Laughlin, Nevada in March and we will be showing the video."

Role in disclosure community

The IUFOC has hosted presentations from most of the major figures in modern UAP research: Steven Greer, Richard Dolan, Stanton Friedman, Linda Moulton Howe, Travis Walton, Whitley Strieber, Jim Marrs, Michael Schratt, Michael Salla, and many others. The conference provided a platform for Bob Lazar's early public appearances and was an early venue for testimony from individuals claiming secret space program or alien abduction experiences. The festival atmosphere — combining academic-style presentations with public witness testimony and Q&A — has been both its strength and a source of criticism from mainstream researchers.

Audience and scale

The IUFOC draws attendance of approximately 1,000 people per year to its annual presentations — a scale that places it among the largest dedicated UAP conferences in the world. Richard Dolan described presenting at the Phoenix-area conference to an audience of that size: "Which I just did a week ago at the International UFO Congress in Phoenix before 1000 people in the audience. I can tell you I got a very, very enthusiastic reception to it."

Venue transition: Laughlin to Fountain Hills

The conference relocated from Laughlin, Nevada to Fountain Hills, Arizona (near Phoenix) at some point in the 2000s — a move that gave the conference access to larger hotel conference facilities while maintaining proximity to the southwestern U.S. UAP research community. References in DS transcripts describe Bob Brown's organization operating in Las Vegas in 1993–94, then in Fountain Hills (described as "Lapland" in one garbled transcript) in subsequent years. The shift reflected the conference's growth in scale and the broader professionalization of the UAP conference circuit during the post-Disclosure Project era.

Ownership and organization

The Congress relocated to the Phoenix, Arizona area in 2011 and has since been organized by Open Minds Production, a Tempe-based UFO/UAP media LLC also responsible for Open Minds UFO Magazine, Open Minds Radio, and the openminds.tv news site. Open Minds staffers Angela Allison, Alejandro Rojas, Maureen Elsberry, and Jason McClellan coordinated the event annually, drawing an estimated 2,500 attendees to the 2014 Congress at the Fort McDowell Resort and Casino. Rojas, as Open Minds' director of operations, continued as the Congress's main organizer through at least its 26th annual edition in 2017. By 2021 the Congress's own website credited "the dedicated team at Open Minds Production" with running the event while carrying a copyright notice for a separate corporate entity, Out of This World Media and Events Incorporated — a transition whose terms are not addressed by any source consulted here.

Prominent presentations

Danny Sheehan and the Harvard program (1994)

Attorney Danny Sheehan presented at the IUFOC in 1994, offering an update on the work he was doing with John Mack at Harvard University on the abduction phenomenon: "The person came up out of the audience back in 1994 when I was speaking at the International UFO Congress giving the people there an update on what we were doing at Harvard with Mack." Sheehan also returned in later years as a presenter and described using his 2025 IUFOC appearance to discuss the deep legal structures around UAP secrecy.

Jonathan Reed presentation (2000)

Jonathan Reed's 2000 IUFOC presentation — a multi-hour lecture delivered to a paying congress audience — became one of the most detailed public accounts of a claimed direct alien contact event in the conference's history. The presentation included video evidence, photographs, and artifact documentation from Reed's alleged 1996 encounter in the Pacific Northwest. Robert Raith, who introduced Reed at the conference, described the congress's policy of presenting controversial speakers with full disclosure to attendees: "When we bring a controversial speaker to the Congress, it is to let you, the delegates, hear the story."

An audience member at the Reed presentation encapsulated the congress's community function: "I love the International UFO Congress. I think it's an amazing amount of people or type of people."

John Rhodes and the international expansion

Researcher John Rhodes described plans to attend a separate International UFO Congress organized in Mexico City — indicating that the "International UFO Congress" brand had been adopted beyond Bob Brown's U.S.-based annual conference: "I have plans on going down to the 1st International UFO Congress in Mexico City in August and having the opportunity to talk down there regarding this."

Networking function

Beyond formal presentations, the IUFOC serves as the primary annual networking hub for the UAP research community — a function described in multiple DS sources as equally or more important than the scheduled programming. Lorien Fenton described meeting a key source "at a conference in, I think it was 2016, International UFO Congress. I believe Melinda and I are sitting in the back of the room." Richard Dolan similarly described an informal corridor encounter at the IUFOC leading to significant testimony from a Navy witness.

Comparison with other conferences

The IUFOC is distinguished from competitors primarily by longevity (founded 1991, the longest-running annual UAP conference in the world), geographic consistency (Southwest U.S.), and its openness to contactee and experiencer accounts alongside scientific and historical research. Comparable conferences include the MUFON Annual Symposium (founded 1969 but with irregular UAP emphasis), Contact in the Desert (founded 2012, more contactee-focused), and the Exopolitics conference circuit organized by Michael Salla. The IUFOC occupies the center of the spectrum — more open to experiencer testimony than MUFON, more research-oriented than Contact in the Desert.

References

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