Three new sightings of the Loch Ness Monster over the past month bring the number of “official” reports of the creature to more than were recorded in all of 2025. Not including sightings made on webcams, Nessie has now been seen nine times in 2026.
The fifth “official” Loch Ness Monster sighting occurred in May. Since then, in a little more than two months, observers have recorded four more sightings, including three in July alone.
Visitors from Australia captured two of the new photos of the Loch Ness Monster
A nine-year-old girl from Australia made the most recent “official” sighting of Nessie and snapped a photo that was good enough to be added to the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register. She was reportedly with her family on the bottom deck of one of the cruise boats on the loch when she took the picture of what she described as the head of a creature in the water.
Just two days prior to that sighting, a man visiting from Australia reported that in the afternoon he was standing at the shoreline at Urquhart Castle when he saw “the top of a dark green flat-topped head” pop out of the water. He too captured a photo of what he believes was the Loch Ness Monster.
“The head was followed by two same colored humps that emerged out of the water behind the head, which he thought would be the body,” the report continued. “Then he saw ripple lines about 500 meters behind the humps and it made quite decent white waves which he expected it was from the tail swimming through the water. After the tail swished water over its head it then swum back down below the water. He said he never saw it again for the rest of the day.”
16 days prior to that, an eight-year-old girl and her family from the Edinburgh area “spotted a small dark object” in the distance, which they believed was approximately 6 feet long and 3 feet high. They also captured a photo and described the object by saying “that if it was a boat it would have been a very small rowing boat and it moved more like a speed boat or jet ski in the water.”
Previous Loch Ness Monster sightings in 2026
On June 23, a visitor from Kent snapped a photo of an unidentified object near the Jacobite Cruises ship as it approached Urquhart Castle. The captain of Jacobite Cruises acknowledged that they were unable to provide an explanation for the nature of the green mass.
An American visiting Scotland was the fifth “official” Loch Ness Monster sighting recorded in 2026 on the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register. He was traveling on a tour bus down the shore when the alleged sighting happened.
On April 25, Holly Palmer of Worcestershire reported that around 2 p.m. she and Scot McMillan saw something in Loch Ness while traveling on the Jacobite Cruise boat.
Two days prior to that sighting, two women visiting from Ontario, Canada, were driving along Loch Ness, when one of the women “spotted a large shape crest the water that she thought looked like a whale.”
Two days prior to that Loch Ness Monster sighting, a woman and her husband, visiting the loch from America, reported seeing what looked like a white shark fin moving in the water.