A brown bear known as 89 Backpack has won Fat Bear Week 2026, Katmai National Park's annual tournament celebrating the bears that have packed on the most weight before winter. She beat a bear known as 910 in Tuesday's final, 103,334 votes to 98,253.
Fat Bear Week, run by the park and Explore.org, which operates live cameras on the Brooks River in southwest Alaska, has turned the ordinary biology of hibernation prep into a single-elimination bracket since 2014. Each September, as sockeye salmon run up the river, Katmai's brown bears gorge for weeks, sometimes doubling their body weight, to build enough fat to survive a winter of fasting in their dens. The fatter the bear going into October, voters are told, the better its odds of making it to spring.
This year's tournament ran from Sept. 22 to Sept. 29 and drew more than 2.5 million total votes across its rounds, organizers said, as fans compared before-and-after photos of bears whose silhouettes change dramatically over a single salmon season. Entrants are identified by number rather than formal names, though many — Backpack included — have picked up nicknames from the park's online community over years of being filmed at Brooks Falls.
The contest has grown well beyond Alaska since it started as an informal "Fat Bear Tuesday" post more than a decade ago. It now functions as an unusual piece of public science communication: park rangers use the bracket to explain bear ecology, body condition scoring and the pressures salmon runs face from warming rivers, reaching an audience that a research paper never would. Katmai's own description of the event calls it a celebration of resilience and success in the park's ecosystem.
Not every bear that enters is still around the following year — cubs are vulnerable, and competition for fishing spots along the river can be fierce — which is part of why rangers frame the contest as more than a popularity exercise. A heavier bear in October has a real survival edge.
Backpack now holds the title for 2026. The park's bear cameras remain live on Explore.org through the fall as the Brooks River bears continue fishing before retreating to dens, and voting for next year's bracket is not expected to open until the salmon return again in late summer 2027.
