What was claimed
Aerial footage shows huge crowds at the Unite the Kingdom march on 16 May 2026.
Our verdict
This footage is actually from the Unite the Kingdom protest on 13 September 2025.
Old Unite the Kingdom video shared as if recent
A video of last September’s Unite the Kingdom march is being shared on social media along with claims it shows the march from 16 May.
The video is an aerial shot of crowds lining streets in London, and includes a Guardian watermark. A caption posted alongside the video claims: “Huge crowds filled the streets of London during the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally led by [sic] on May 16, 2026. Viral videos from central London showed thousands of supporters marching with Union flags.”
A Unite the Kingdom march did take place on 16 May.
Despite some comments under the video mentioning AI, the footage is real, but the clip used in this post is actually from 13 September 2025, when another Unite the Kingdom march took place. Between 110,000 to 150,000 attended that protest, according to estimates at the time from the Metropolitan Police.
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By contrast, the Met estimates around 60,000 people took part in the most recent Unite the Kingdom march.
Images and videos which are miscaptioned to suggest they refer to a different event than the one they portray can create an incorrect or misleading interpretation of events.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because this video shows the Unite the Kingdom march that took place in September 2025, not in March 2026.