A mild-mannered brown bear with royal lineage has been crowned the champion of this year's Fat Bear Week, the beloved annual competition that celebrates the most impressively rotund residents of Alaska's Katmai National Park and Preserve. Backpack, officially known as Bear 89, was declared the winner with more than 100,000 votes, edging out rival Bear 910 with just over 50 per cent of the poll to claim the title of Alaska's heftiest bear.
Who is Backpack, Alaska's Fat Bear Week champion?
Backpack's story is one of wildlife royalty. He is the son of Holly, a former Fat Bear Week champion in her own right, who first brought him to the Brooks River as a first-year cub back in 2006. His distinctive name was born from an endearing habit: as a young cub, he would clamber onto his mother's back whenever the pair crossed the river, essentially riding her like a backpack through the current.
Now a fully grown adult male, Backpack has earned a reputation that sets him apart from many of his large male peers. "Unlike many large adult male bears, Backpack hasn't shown much aggression toward his competitors," his official contestant profile notes — a quality that has endeared him to fans around the world who celebrated his victory on social media, cheering his lineage and his reputation as a gentle giant.
His path to this year's title was not without obstacles. Last year's champion, Chunk — officially Bear 32 — who won at an estimated 545 kilograms, was eliminated in the first round of this year's competition by a bear named Bucky. Bucky then went on to face Backpack in a later round, where Backpack prevailed to ultimately claim the crown.
What is Fat Bear Week and why does it matter?
Fat Bear Week is now in its 12th year, having been established in 2014 as an engaging, interactive way to connect the public with one of North America's most iconic animals. The competition centres on the approximately 2,200 brown bears that call Katmai National Park and Preserve home — a vast wilderness located on the Alaska Peninsula, which stretches from the state's south-west corner out toward the Aleutian Islands.
Brown bears along this coastline are sometimes described as the coastal cousins of grizzlies, and the Brooks River at the heart of the park is their dining table. From late June each year, salmon return to the river in abundance, triggering a critical feeding frenzy among the bears. Over the course of the summer and into autumn, these animals must gorge themselves relentlessly, packing on fat reserves that will sustain them through months of winter hibernation.
The stakes of that seasonal feast are enormous. During hibernation, bears do not eat or drink at all, and can lose up to one-third of their body weight before emerging in spring. As the organising nonprofit puts it simply on its website: "Fat bears are successful bears." The fatter a bear is heading into winter, the better its chances of surviving the season — making the contest not just entertaining, but genuinely reflective of each animal's fitness and resilience.
How the competition works
Voting in Fat Bear Week takes place entirely online, with members of the public casting their ballots through the official competition website. Before voting, fans can observe the bears in action via livestream cameras operated through explore.org, watching the animals fish, lounge and fatten up along the Brooks River in real time.
The format is a bracket-style elimination tournament, with bears going head-to-head across multiple rounds until a single champion is crowned. This year, Backpack's journey to the title required him to outlast the field — including overcoming Bucky, who had already toppled the reigning champion Chunk in an earlier upset.
The result was announced on Wednesday Australian time, capping a week of intense online engagement that drew well over 100,000 votes for the winning bear alone — a testament to the event's growing international following.
A celebration of wild resilience
Beyond the fun of competitive voting, Fat Bear Week serves a broader purpose: highlighting the remarkable biological achievement that these animals accomplish each year simply to survive. The annual fattening cycle — gorging on salmon through summer, then fasting through winter without losing muscle mass in the way humans would — represents one of nature's more extraordinary feats of endurance.
For Backpack, this year's title adds another chapter to an already compelling story. Born to a champion, named for a childhood quirk, and now a champion himself, the gentle giant of Katmai has captured the imagination of bear enthusiasts worldwide. His victory is a reminder that in the Brooks River's seasonal drama, a well-timed winner doesn't always have to be the most aggressive competitor in the field — sometimes, the biggest and most peaceable bear takes the prize.
Fat Bear Week voting and bear-watching via livestream are accessible online, with cameras giving the public a window into the wild spectacle unfolding each salmon season along one of Alaska's most celebrated rivers.
