Fat Bear Week 2026 Is Here; Meet the 16 Very Chunky Bears Competing for the Crown

Fat Bear Week is back, and 16 extremely well-fed brown bears are ready to battle for one of the most coveted crowns in the animal kingdom.

Katmai National Park and Preserve and Explore.org have revealed the bracket for Fat Bear Week 2026, the annual single-elimination tournament celebrating the brown bears of Alaska’s Brooks River and the astonishing amount of weight they pack on ahead of winter hibernation.

Voting begins Tuesday, Sept. 22, and continues through Sept. 29, when this year’s Fat Bear Week champion will be crowned.

And yes, reigning champion 32 Chunk is back to defend his title.

Who Is Competing in Fat Bear Week 2026?

This year’s field includes bear families, youngsters and some truly enormous adults.

The five families are 132 and her three spring cubs; 284 and her two spring cubs; 610 and her two spring cubs; 806 with her biological spring cub and adopted 2.5-year-old cub; and 901 with her spring cub.

They earned an especially prominent place in this year’s competition after a record 19 bear families and 37 cubs were seen at Brooks River during the summer of 2026.

The two subadults in the field are 620 and 694, while the single adult females are 131 Marshmallow, 428 Studious, 909 and 910.

Then come the heavyweights.

The five adult males are defending champion 32 Chunk, 89 Backpack, 151 Walker, 164 Bucky and 903 Gully.

Chunk has quite the story behind his championship defense. The massive male suffered a broken jaw in June 2025, leaving him with a distinctive scar on his muzzle and a protruding canine tooth. Despite the injury, he adapted, recovered and eventually became the 2025 Fat Bear Week champion.

He largely disappeared from Brooks River this summer before returning in September. But judging by what park officials describe as his “low hanging belly,” Chunk certainly wasn’t skipping meals while he was away.

Backpack has a pretty great origin story, too. His mother is 2019 Fat Bear Week champion 435 Holly, and he earned his nickname as a cub because he would climb onto his mother’s back while the two swam through the river.

Why Do the Bears Get So Fat?

For Katmai’s brown bears, becoming impressively chunky isn’t merely an achievement. It’s survival.

The bears spend the summer and fall consuming huge quantities of food, particularly the sockeye salmon running through Brooks River. They need those fat reserves because during winter hibernation, the bears don’t eat or drink and may lose as much as one-third of their body weight.

The biggest adult males at Brooks River can weigh more than 1,200 pounds by late summer and fall.

Fat Bear Week began on a much smaller scale in 2014 as “Fat Bear Tuesday.” The following year, it expanded into a weeklong online competition, with fans comparing photos and voting for the bears they believe have done the most impressive job preparing for winter.

The contest has since become an international phenomenon. More than 1.7 million votes were registered in 2025.

Now Chunk just has to prove that one year at the top wasn’t enough.

Voting for Fat Bear Week 2026 runs Sept. 22 through Sept. 29, with fans able to follow the bears through Explore.org’s live cameras and cast their votes online.