Bear 89 Backpack wins Fat Bear Week 2026 in a nail-biter, carrying on a family legacy

Bear 89 Backpack — a roughly 20-year-old male brown bear with a reputation for sitting quietly by himself at Brooks Falls — has been crowned the 2026 Fat Bear Week champion at Alaska's Katmai National Park and Preserve, defeating female bear 910 in a final-round vote that came down to about 5,000 ballots out of nearly 200,000 cast.

Backpack received 103,334 votes to 910's 98,253, according to Explore.org, closing out a weeklong single-elimination tournament that began with 16 bears and drew more than 2.5 million total votes. The Department of the Interior's social media account confirmed the victory, giving Backpack a string of titles to go with his championship.

Hear ye, hear ye! We have a Fat Bear Week winner! This year's Lord of Lard, Earl of Girth and Commander in Beef is... Bear 89 also known as Backpack!— Department of the Interior

The win is a family affair. Backpack's mother is Holly — nicknamed the 'Duchess of Density' and the 'Queen of Corpulence' — who won Fat Bear Week in 2019. Holly introduced Backpack to Brooks River in 2006, and the first-year cub earned his name by climbing onto her back rather than wade through the river himself, according to park officials.

His path to adulthood was not guaranteed. When Backpack was about two years old, he suffered a significant leg injury that led park rangers to question his chances of survival. He eventually recovered, became independent in 2008, and has since grown into what his official biography describes as a bear of 'quiet toughness' — one who has found a place 'alongside the biggest bears at Brooks River.'

Despite his size, Backpack is known for a calm, almost solitary temperament — park ranger Sarah Bruce and contest materials have compared aspects of his disposition to Ferdinand the Bull. That gentle giant quality won over voters, with supporters praising both his 'chonk and the badonk' and calling him a 'big fuzzy boy,' according to Dexerto.

910's supporters made a strong case of their own, pointing to her year raising both her own cub and an adopted niece. One voter argued she was a 'larger bear all around' and that Backpack 'just has a bigger booty,' according to Dexerto. The closeness of the final — the tightest of Backpack's run — reflected genuine division among the contest's global fanbase.

Backpack had dominated earlier rounds. He beat other contenders in the first two rounds by more than 100,000 votes each, before barely edging out 164 Bucky in the semifinals while 910 easily dispatched 132. The bracket this year expanded from 12 competitors to 16, and first-round voting was so heavy that park officials said it 'broke the internet' — the website was overwhelmed and voting had to be extended an additional day, with Katmai officials joking that 'apparently the internet was not prepared to handle this much fat bear.'

The contest, which the National Park Service describes as a 'battle of size, skill, snack acquisition, and strategic loafing,' exists for a serious ecological reason. From June until around mid-October, Katmai's bears gorge on food — particularly the sockeye salmon of Brooks River — before retreating to their dens. Bears do not eat or drink during hibernation and can lose around a third of their body weight over winter, according to Dexerto. Fat Bear Week celebrates that pre-hibernation bulking as a marker of survival fitness.

Fat bears are successful bears.— Katmai National Park Fat Bear Week website

Katmai ranger Sarah Bruce stressed in several interviews that any bear considered for Fat Bear Week is already a winner by that standard.

The contest started in 2014 as a single-day event to showcase southwest Alaska's bears. In 2025 it received more than 1.7 million votes from more than 100 countries, according to the National Park Service; this year's 2.5 million-plus total marks further growth. Over 12 years, the competition has produced six champions, three of them repeat winners. The most dominant has been 480 Otis, who won in 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2021. Otis has not been observed since his last win. Bear 409 Beadnose — 910's mother — won in 2015 and 2018 and has also not been spotted since. Other past champions include 747 (2020, 2022), 128 Grazer (2023, 2024), and last year's winner 32 Chunk, who did not survive the first round of voting in 2026.

We're celebrating more than crowned champions and epic bear glow-ups, we're celebrating all of you! This year, we honored resilience in our bears and in our nation, recognizing the landscapes, communities and shared stories that connect us. Thanks for being part of the journey. Until next year, enjoy the bears, salmon, and human connection that keeps Katmai's ecosystem alive.— Katmai National Park and Preserve

Why it matters — Fat Bear Week has grown from a one-day park curiosity into a global event with millions of participants, using the spectacle of very large bears to build public awareness of brown bear ecology and the health of Katmai's salmon-dependent ecosystem.

Reported by cbsnews.com, pbs.org, deseret.com, nytimes.com, dexerto.com, usatoday.com