Fat Bear Week is returning this Tuesday at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve to answer one of the most important questions for the beast enthusiasts: Which bear is the fattest?
For the 2026 edition, 16 brown bears are competing for the crown. The competition isn’t about making fun of the overweight bears but to appreciate their survivability skills as for Katmai’s brown bears, getting fat is a matter of survival.
They spend the summer eating as much as they can, much of it salmon from the Brooks River, before heading into their dens for winter. Bears can lose around a third of their body weight during hibernation.
The fatter they are going in, the better.
This year’s field is bigger than last year’s and includes mothers with cubs, single females, younger bears and some seriously enormous adult males.
And there is a familiar face defending the title. Bear 32, better known as Chunk, is back after winning Fat Bear Week in 2025.
Chunk’s victory last year came despite him starting the salmon season with a broken jaw. He still managed to catch enough fish to become one of the biggest bears on the river and eventually collected nearly 100,000 votes in the final.
He may have an even tougher fight this year.
Bear 164, or Bucky Dent, has emerged as one of the names to watch. He is still relatively young but has become increasingly dominant at Brooks River and is already an exceptionally large bear.
Then there is Bear 151, known as Walker, another regular at Brooks River.
Bear 903, nicknamed Gully, completes the adult male group. Gully is the son of two-time Fat Bear Week winner Grazer and apparently doesn’t restrict himself to salmon, he has also developed a taste for gulls.
The competition isn’t all about the big males.
Four mothers and their cubs are in the bracket this year: Bear 132 and her three spring cubs, 284 Electra and her two cubs, 806 and her mixed-age cubs, and 901 with her spring cub.
The single females are Bears 909, 428, 131 and 910.
Bear 910 already has a bit of Fat Bear Week history behind her. In 2022, she adopted one of her sister’s cubs, creating an unusual blended bear family.
Four younger bears round out the field. They are Bears 694, 620, 610 and 89, better known as Backpack.
The Backpack also has championship blood. His mother is Bear 435 Holly, who won Fat Bear Week in 2019.
So who wins?
Chunk is difficult to bet against. He is the defending champion, enormous and already well known to people who follow the competition.
But Bucky could be the bear who stops him.
Katmai naturalist Mike Fitz has pointed to Bucky’s increasing dominance at Brooks River over the past few years. Despite being younger than 10, he has already grown into a giant and has become an exceptionally capable salmon fisherman.
Our early pick would be Bucky, with Chunk the obvious bear standing in his way.
Of course, being physically enormous doesn’t automatically get you the crown.
Fat Bear Week is decided by people online and voters are encouraged to consider not only size but how much weight each bear gained and what it had to overcome during the summer.
That means a mother successfully raising cubs while putting on enough weight herself can make just as compelling a case as a massive male sitting beside the river eating salmon all day.
Voting begins September 22 and continues through September 29, when the 2026 Fat Bear Week champion will be crowned.
Each matchup is open for voting between noon and 9 p.m. Eastern Time.
And yes, anyone can vote.
2026-09-21 19:00:00
