A brown bear named 89 Backpack has won Fat Bear Week 2026, the annual bracket-style popularity contest that celebrates the heftiest bears of Katmai National Park and Preserve in southwestern Alaska.
Backpack beat bear 910 in Tuesday's final, drawing roughly 103,000 votes to his opponent's 98,000, according to Katmai National Park and the nonprofit livestream platform Explore.org, which jointly run the contest. Voting opened Sept. 22 and continued through Sept. 29, pausing on the intervening weekend.
Now about 20 years old, Backpack earned his nickname as a cub, when an injury left him riding on his mother Holly's back rather than walking. Holly herself won Fat Bear Week in 2019. Park ranger Sarah Bruce described Backpack, per UPI, as a low-drama presence on the river who carries comparatively few scars for a male bear his age.
The competition tracks how dramatically Katmai's brown bears transform each summer and fall, as they gorge on sockeye salmon running through the Brooks River to build the fat reserves that will carry them through winter hibernation. Contestants are nominated by park rangers and photographed before-and-after to illustrate the seasonal bulk-up, then voted on by the public in single-elimination rounds.
This year's 16-bear bracket was among the largest yet, and organizers said the opening day of voting drew enough traffic to briefly crash the official site. Backpack's win caps a season park staff described as unusually productive for cubs at Brooks Camp.
Fat Bear Week began in 2014 as a single-day event and has grown into a multi-day global phenomenon, drawing votes from more than 100 countries in recent years. The contest has no cash prize; the reward, as organizers put it, is survival through the Alaskan winter.
Runner-up 910 put up a strong late push in the finals but ultimately fell short after Backpack's supporters rallied in the competition's closing hours. Park staff said both bears looked well-prepared for hibernation, with Katmai's salmon run this year supporting a healthy crop of cubs along the river.
