BUENOS AIRES, Argentina â A major blackout swept across Buenos Aires and surrounding parts of the metropolitan area on Saturday night, September 19, cutting electricity to nearly 600,000 customers at the peak of the disruption and triggering widespread speculation online about unusual lights and alleged UFO activity.
đŚđˇ Major blackout hits northern Buenos Aires â real, with a mundane cause, and no, not UFOs
— đĽđThe Informant (@theinformant_x) September 20, 2026
A large blackout struck the northern corridor of Buenos Aires and parts of Greater Buenos Aires on Saturday night, Sept. 19, beginning around 8â9 PM. Affected neighborhoods included⌠pic.twitter.com/QL7rawNzRF
The outage affected large parts of northern Buenos Aires and Greater Buenos Aires, with traffic lights failing, apartment blocks going dark and emergency crews responding to people reportedly trapped in elevators.
While UFO claims quickly spread across social media, there is currently no verified evidence linking any unidentified object or unusual aerial activity to the blackout.
Nearly 600,000 customers lost power
According to figures cited by Argentine media, approximately 519,472 Edenor customers were without electricity at one stage, while roughly 77,000 to 78,000 Edesur customers were also affected.
That brought the combined total close to 597,000 electricity accounts. The actual number of people affected would have been much higher because a single electricity account can serve an entire household.
Neighborhoods reporting outages included Palermo, Belgrano, Núùez, Recoleta, Saavedra, Colegiales, Villa Urquiza, Villa Crespo, Flores, Floresta and Villa Devoto.
Areas outside central Buenos Aires, including Vicente LĂłpez, San Isidro and San Fernando, were also affected.
TN reported widespread darkness across the metropolitan area, with videos showing buildings, streets and major intersections without power.
The disruption follows other major service outages seen internationally in recent weeks. A recent Salesforce outage caused widespread login failures during Dreamforce, highlighting how quickly large-scale infrastructure failures can disrupt normal activity.
Traffic chaos, elevators and rapid restoration
The blackout caused immediate problems across the city as traffic signals stopped working at several busy intersections.
Drivers were forced to navigate junctions without functioning lights, while Buenos Aires firefighters were reportedly called to assist people trapped inside elevators after electricity suddenly failed.
Some shopping centers and buildings switched to backup power, while surrounding streets remained dark.
Despite the huge number of customers initially affected, electricity began returning relatively quickly in several neighborhoods.
By later in the evening, outage numbers had fallen sharply. Reports indicated that by around 11 p.m., only a small number of Edenor and Edesur customers remained without service.
Edesur said the interruption affecting its customers resulted from a failure outside its own network, while Edenor continued restoring electricity in stages.
What caused the Buenos Aires blackout?
The exact technical cause remains unclear.
Some early reports pointed to a problem within the wider electrical system, but authorities had not released a detailed explanation identifying the original point of failure.
This uncertainty helped fuel speculation online.
Several social-media users claimed they saw unusual lights in the sky around the time of the blackout, while others reported mobile-phone connectivity problems.
Those posts quickly led to claims of a possible UFO connection.
However, no electricity company, regulator or official authority has connected the outage with UFO activity.
Mobile networks can also become congested during major blackouts as thousands of households lose Wi-Fi simultaneously and switch to cellular data.
For now, the confirmed facts point to a large electrical-system disruption followed by relatively rapid restoration, while the UFO theory remains unverified.
This is a developing story and will be updated if electricity authorities release a more detailed explanation of the outage.
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