Every fall, the iconic brown bears (Ursus arctos) of Katmai National Park do something extraordinary. They spend weeks gorging on sockeye salmon along Brooks River, packing on hundreds of pounds of fat in order to survive an Alaskan winter in the den. And every fall, fans around the world get to weigh in on who did it best.
Fat Bear Week begins on Tuesday, September 22, and voting is open to anyone with an internet connection. Here is everything you need to know.
What is Fat Bear Week?
As Popular Science reports, think of it as March Madness, just without the basketball and significantly more bears. Fat Bear Week is a single-elimination tournament, where bear enthusiasts from around the world can vote online for their favorite chunky bear.
After each round, the bear with the most votes advances until the winner is announced on September 29. According to the Katmai Conservancy, the event began as a one-day event in 2014 with 1,700 votes cast. Now just a decade later, 1.2 million votes were cast from over 100 countries.
Fun for Us, but It’s a Matter of Survival
The brown bears return to Brooks Falls for the salmon migration every year in late June, where viewers can watch them on explore.org‘s livestream. There, they will feast to fatten up for the long winter ahead. By late summer, the nutritious fish will spawn and then begin to die. The bears will then move to the lower Brooks River in September and October to eat the dead and dying salmon near the river’s mouth.
Eating all of this salmon is important because the heftier the bear, the better chance they will survive their long winter hibernation. Despite being the poster species for winter hibernation, bears are not “deep hibernators” the way that squirrels, bats, and bees are. Bears enter a state called torpor, which is an involuntary state primarily triggered by lack of food. During this time, the bears rely on stored fat reserves for energy. A torpid bear’s eating, drinking, and waste functions will cease, as its body metabolizes the stores it packed on over the summer.
How to Vote During Fat Bear Week
Votes may be cast from noon to 9 p.m. EDT (9 a.m. to 6 p.m. PDT and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ADT) from September 22 and 29 at fatbearweek.org.
Photographs comparing the bears from earlier in the summer and later in the summer will be shown, so voters can get an idea of just how much weight the bears put on during their salmon fest. An adult male bear can go from roughly 700 pounds in the early summer to over 1,200 pounds by fall.
Voters are also encouraged to get familiar with each bear’s life history and the unique challenges they face to survive.
2026 Fat Bear Week Schedule
- Bracket revealed: September 18, 2026
- Voting opens: September 22, 2026
- Voting closes: September 29, 2026 (no voting on weekends)
- Champion crowned: September 29, 2026
- Where to vote: fatbearweek.org
Recent Fat Bear Week champions
2025: Bear 32 “Chunk” — Estimated over 1,200 lbs. Won with 96,350 votes after finishing runner-up in both 2023 and 2024. Competed that year with a broken jaw from a fight with another bear.
2024: Bear 128 “Grazer” — Back-to-back champion. Won in a rematch against Chunk, whose opponent had killed one of her cubs the previous summer.
2023: Bear 128 “Grazer” — Won with 108,321 votes, becoming one of only three female champions in the competition’s history.
So will Chunk defend his 2025 title, or will Grazer make a comeback run? Both are expected to be on the river this season. The 2026 bracket will be revealed September 18, giving fans a week to scout the live cams before voting opens.
How to Support the Katmai Bears
Fat Bear Week is genuinely entertaining, but it also does real conservation work. The live cams on Explore.org put millions of people face to face with wild Alaska brown bears in their natural habitat, building public awareness and support for the park and its ecosystem. For a park as remote as Katmai, that kind of connection is invaluable. If you have never watched a 1,200-pound bear snag a leaping salmon out of the air, the Brooks Falls live cam is a good place to start.
If you’d like to help, donations can be made to Katmai Conservancy’s Otis Fund. The Otis Fund is named after Bear #480 (Otis), who won four Fat Bear Week titles before his death around 2024. All donations made between September 22 and October 3 will be matched by explore.org.
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Photo Credit: Michael J Thompson / Shutterstock.com
