At 10:30 a.m. on March 1, 2026, Tony Inhorn, visiting from the United States, was near the opening of the Caledonian Canal at the south end of Loch Ness when he saw what he described as the dark greenish-gray body of what appeared to be Nessie rising out of the water. He thought he was looking at the creature’s back or side at a 45-degree angle, and said it stood out clearly against the waves, which convinced him it wasn’t just the current. He sent an account and a sketch to the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register, which accepted it as the first official sighting of the year.

Others followed in April. Around April 21, Sara Gubicza and her husband, also from the U.S., saw a whitish-gray triangular fin about 18 inches tall in the middle of the loch from a tour bus. Shortly before noon on April 23, Margaret Sunstrum and Joan Sweeney of Ontario, driving the shoreline, saw a large shape crest the calm water, which Sunstrum thought looked like a whale, followed by a long S-shaped wake. On the afternoon of April 25, Holly Palmer of Worcestershire photographed something from a Jacobite cruise boat.

That brought the official count to four by the end of April, against six for all of 2025. Separately, longtime webcam watcher Eoin O’Faodhagain reported an object rising and sinking four times on a hotel webcam on March 5.

Adrian Shine of the Loch Ness Project, after more than 50 years of study, attributes most sightings to boat wakes and the way the deep loch carries them.