GEIPAN, the Groupe d'études et d'informations sur les phénomènes aérospatiaux non identifiés, is a technical service of the Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES), France's space agency, based in Toulouse. It collects reports of unidentified aerospace phenomena (PAN, the French term for UAP) seen in France, looks for conventional explanations, and anonymizes, archives and publishes its case files. The service states that it "is not a research group on UFOs and extraterrestrial life" and that it uses only recognized scientific knowledge. CNES employees run it with volunteer investigators and institutional partners, and agreements give it rapid access to data from the National Gendarmerie, the French Air and Space Force, civil aviation and Météo-France. A steering committee of CNES and partner representatives advises CNES management.

The office began in 1977 as GEPAN, created on the initiative of CNES director general Yves Sillard and of the engineer Claude Poher, its first head. From 1978 it built a method combining field investigation, scientific analysis and statistics, drawing on gendarmerie reports and a small network of outside experts. It could also call on CNES laboratories when physical traces were reported, most famously in the 1981 Trans-en-Provence case. In 1988 CNES replaced it with SEPRA, a service centered on atmospheric re-entries that continued to handle sighting reports, led for nearly all of its existence by Jean-Jacques Velasco. After a 2001 audit, CNES replaced SEPRA with GEIPAN in 2005, adding "information" to the name along with a recommendation to inform the public transparently.

GEIPAN began publishing its archives in March 2007, and its website went online in 2008. Each case receives one of four classes: A, perfectly identified; B, probably identified; C, unidentified for lack of data; and D, unidentified after investigation. Since 2008 D cases have been subdivided into D1 and D2 by their residual strangeness and consistency, though GEIPAN notes that a D1 or D2 case "remains a D case." Its statistics in August 2026 listed 3,381 cases: 28.1 percent in class A, 38.7 percent in B, 30 percent in C and 3.1 percent, or 106 cases, in D. Critics have challenged that last category, including a 2008 book by Rossoni, Maillot and Deguillaume arguing that the unexplained cases are weaker than presented. Frédéric Courtade has directed the service since January 2024.

GEIPAN took a public role in the French debate in 2026. At the June 29 colloquium on unidentified aerospace phenomena at the French National Assembly, Courtade said the service's mission centers on informing the public, including through its open archives, and that neither GEIPAN nor CNES conducts research on unexplained cases. GEIPAN expert Gilles Munsch spoke there on the limits of testimony and instrument data. In September 2026 the Sol Foundation released a talk by data scientist Michael Vaillant on lessons from two decades of GEIPAN investigations.

Nearly five decades after GEPAN's founding, GEIPAN remains a standing government office that publishes its case archive and classifications online. That open, explanation-first model is what French deputies chose to showcase in 2026, and it gives researchers in other countries a public record of more than 3,000 graded case files.