What you need to know about “Fat Bear Week”
By Easton Martin
The Department of the Interior and the National Park Service have concluded the annual Fat Bear Week competition at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, crowning Bear 89, nicknamed “Backpack,” as the 2026 champion.
The single-elimination tournament, run in partnership with Explore.org and the Katmai Conservancy, tracks brown bears along the Brooks River as they consume sockeye salmon to accumulate fat reserves before winter hibernation.
Online voters evaluated before-and-after photographs of the animals across several rounds between Sept. 22 and Sept. 29. Park biologists note that during the summer feeding period, adult brown bears can gain dozens of pounds per day, frequently losing up to one-third of their total body mass while in their dens over the winter.
The event originated in 2014 as a single-day public voting poll called Fat Bear Tuesday before expanding into a week-long bracket. The National Park Service utilizes the contest each autumn to showcase the Bristol Bay ecosystem and illustrate the relationship between sockeye salmon runs and brown bear survival.
