A spinning-top UFO over Chignahuapan? A giant paper balloon is the likeliest answer

5 min read

On November 1, a video from Chignahuapan, Mexico, went viral: locals and tourists film a large, slow-moving object shaped like a spinning top. According to the Mexican press, the footage is real and shows a traditional paper hot-air balloon. That is very likely, but no one has yet identified which balloon it was.

What does the video show?

On Sunday, November 1, 2026, a social media account called Conoce Chignahuapan posted a video from the town of Chignahuapan in the state of Puebla of people filming a large flying object with their phones. Eerie music was added to the clip. According to La i Noticias, the object was shaped like a spinning top (trompo in Spanish) and moved slowly. La Razón de México reported on November 2 that the footage is real and was not created with artificial intelligence.

None of the outlets named the person who filmed it or said exactly when it was recorded. The town was busy those days: the 30th Festival of Light and Life (Festival de la Luz y la Vida) opened on November 2, and the mayor expected more than 80,000 visitors.

The press explanation: a paper balloon from Zongozotla

According to La Razón, the object was a large globo de cantoya, a hot-air balloon made of tissue paper, that had been drifting over Puebla state since October 31. The paper links it to a regional balloon contest in Zongozotla and cites a Facebook post by the Zongozotla municipal government. La i Noticias gave the same explanation on November 3, without naming a source.

The contest did take place. The municipal government of Zongozotla, a town in the Sierra Norte mountains, held its regional paper balloon contest (Concurso Regional de Globos de Cantoya) in the main square on Saturday, October 31, starting at 8 a.m. According to Curul Puebla, the launch was scheduled for the morning because wind can make it hard for the balloons to fly. Local reports describe balloons between 7 and 20 meters tall. Each one takes 1,000 to 2,000 sheets of tissue paper, and El Universal Puebla mentions one entry made of 2,800 sheets with 96 points. Building one takes three to four months.

Zongozotla lies roughly 35 kilometers east-northeast of Chignahuapan in a straight line. The two towns sit at very different elevations: Zongozotla at 1,123 meters, Chignahuapan at 2,282 meters.

It wasn't the only balloon event

Giant paper balloons were being launched elsewhere in the region too. Cuetzalan, east of Zongozotla, hosted the second “El Vuelo del Quetzal” international paper balloon festival, with Colombia as guest country. Advance coverage put it on October 30 and 31; Meganoticias says October 31 and November 1. Cuetzalan is about 57 kilometers from Chignahuapan in a straight line.

Around 1 a.m. on November 2, a giant paper balloon landed on the roof of a house in central Cuetzalan and set it on fire. Residents suspected one of the festival balloons, but this has not been officially confirmed.

In other words, over the weekend around Mexico's Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos), large paper balloons may have been drifting over Puebla's highlands from more than one place.

How does a balloon like this fly?

A paper balloon works on a simple principle. A wire ring holds the tissue-paper envelope open, and a flame burns in it, traditionally from paper soaked in paraffin. The flame heats the air inside the envelope, making it lighter than the cooler air around it, and the balloon rises. When the flame goes out, the balloon drifts back down to earth.

The balloons cannot be steered; the wind carries them. In a 2023 case in Texcoco, a roughly 10-meter balloon launched in Chiconcuac was swept away by strong gusts. It stayed aloft for about 40 minutes and came down on a house after traveling nearly 17 kilometers.

The balloons are named after Joaquín de la Cantolla y Rico, a 19th-century Mexican balloonist, so the correct spelling would be Cantolla, though cantoya is the common form. Cantolla went up in a balloon in June 1863, becoming a pioneer of crewed air travel in Mexico. He later designed smaller paper balloons and made them popular in the country.

Not the first “UFO” of its kind

Paper balloons are regularly mistaken for unidentified objects in Mexico. On August 1, 2021, residents of Ecatepec photographed a spiky “flying saucer” with a round base, which turned out to be a paper balloon launched from Chiconcuac.

The balloons are not harmless, either. On January 1, 2024, more than 40 paper balloons were cleared from the runways and surrounding areas of Mérida's airport, which warned that they pose a hazard to aircraft taking off and landing and could start a fire near the terminal. In Mexico City, a local lawmaker said in 2016 that paper balloons had caused 164 fires in protected natural areas over 11 years.

The sober take

What is certain? According to the Mexican press, the video is real and was not made with artificial intelligence. Giant paper balloons were launched in Zongozotla on October 31 and in Cuetzalan in late October. Both towns lie east-northeast of Chignahuapan, 35 and 57 kilometers away respectively.

What supports the balloon explanation?

The description – a large, slow-moving object shaped like a spinning top – fits a multi-pointed paper balloon several meters tall.
The timing: several balloon events were held in the region around the Day of the Dead.
Paper balloons have been mistaken for UFOs in Mexico before.

What is not proven?

No one has identified which balloon appears in the video. The Zongozotla organizers have not confirmed it was one of theirs.
The exact time of the recording has not been published.
Nothing supports La Razón's claim that the balloon had been drifting since October 31. A paper balloon flies only as long as its flame burns; the 10-meter balloon in Texcoco, for example, stayed up for about 40 minutes. If the video was shot on November 1, a balloon launched later is more likely.
We found no wind data, so it cannot be checked whether the wind was blowing toward Chignahuapan.

Bottom line: The simplest and most likely explanation is a giant paper hot-air balloon, but which one, and where it was launched, remains unknown.