Bear fans worldwide can watch the bears of Katmai National Park bulk up on salmon and vote for their favorite starting Sept. 22
Credit: Courtesy C Loberg
NEED TO KNOW
- Fat Bear Week celebrates Katmai National Park’s brown bears as they bulk up for hibernation
- The bracket-style competition features 16 bears, including defending champion Chunk and past winner Grazer
- Fans can vote online daily and watch live bear cams, with donations supporting Katmai’s conservation efforts
It’s that time of year again in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve: Fat Bear Week is back to celebrate the park’s brown bears as they bulk up for winter.
From Tuesday, Sept. 22, through Sept. 29, people all over the world can cast votes online for their favorite beefy bears. This year, 16 bears go head-to-head in a bracket-style competition to determine which bear of Brooks River is the fattest — and, by extension, the most successful at preparing for hibernation.
Fat Bear Week is run as a single-elimination tournament, using a March Madness-style bracket to track the winners. Each round, the bear with the most votes advances until a champion is crowned on Sept. 29. Fans can peek at the contenders using Katmai’s live bear cams before casting their votes.
Here’s everything voters need to know about Fat Bear Week 2026.
Credit: Courtesy C Loberg
Why is Fat Bear Week important?
Fat Bear Week may get those competitive juices flowing, but the annual competition reflects a mission of survival for these bears. For brown bears, fat is everything and can be a matter of life or death if it is not stored in abundance. A bear can lose a third of its body weight during hibernation, and females can’t become pregnant unless they have enough fat reserves to sustain a cub.
“A fat bear is a successful bear, and Fat Bear Week celebrates the success of these wild, brown bears,” Katmai National Park said in a statement announcing this year’s event. “America’s natural and cultural landscapes that support these fat bears embody an evolving national story. Katmai National Park and Preserve offers a powerful lens through which visitors can experience an important part of this story.”
The event also brings global attention to Katmai, home to one of the world’s healthiest sockeye salmon runs. According to experts, salmon are critical to bears’ diets, and bears can consume more than 40 in a single day, or roughly 100,000 calories. Without an abundant fish supply, reproduction rates can fall, cub survival can drop, and entire ecosystems can shift, creating a compounding problem.
Who’s competing this year?
Credit: Courtesy C Loberg
This year’s field of 16 includes five mothers with cubs. For the first time in recent years, there will be no Fat Bear Week Junior competition. Instead, young cubs are competing as part of their family units in the main bracket.
Leading the pack is defending champion Chunk (Bear 32), who won the 2025 title after two straight runner-up finishes. First identified in 2007, Chunk broke his jaw in June 2025, likely in a fight with another bear, but claimed the crown anyway. Also returning is fan favorite Grazer (Bear 128), the assertive mother who won back-to-back titles in 2023 and 2024, becoming the first mother bear to take the crown.
Since the park’s bears aren’t collared or tagged, rangers and park staff identify competitors by physical traits, including ear shape, scars, and other body markings, as well as behavior. Among this year’s contenders is Gully (Bear 903), believed to be one of Grazer’s offspring. According to the park, Gully got his name by charging into flocks of gulls for snacks. Katmai naturalist Mike Fitz told Popular Science that the bears have reached “peak fat” and are ready for the long, salmon-less winter ahead.
Credit: Courtesy T Hunt
Where can I get the bracket and vote?
Explore.org and the official Fat Bear Week website have shared the official bracket, which fans can fill out to predict the winner. Voting is open daily at fatbearweek.org starting Tuesday, Sept. 22.
Voters can keep an eye on the contestants through Explore.org‘s live bear cams, including the popular view of Brooks Falls, an ideal spot to catch bears snagging salmon swimming upstream.
Credit: Courtesy C Loberg
How much salmon can a bear eat in a day?
To survive hibernation, bears must consume an entire year’s worth of food in roughly six months, and during peak feeding they can gain more than two pounds of fat per day.
By October, males can weigh well over 1,000 pounds, with the largest topping 1,400 pounds. Females average around 700 pounds but need the fat just as badly, since higher body fat increases cub survival.
How did Fat Bear Week start?
Participation has soared since the contest began as “Fat Bear Tuesday” in 2014, maxing out at just 1,700 votes. By the following year, it had grown into a week-long bracket. In 2024, over one million voters participated from about 100 countries.
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The light-hearted event is run jointly by the National Park Service, Explore.org and the Katmai Conservancy. Fans can also donate to the conservancy’s Otis Fund, named for Bear 480 (Otis), a four-time champion who died in 2024. Explore.org will match donations made between Sept. 22 and Oct. 3.
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