Photo by Wiser by the Mile on Unsplash
Bear 89, known to fans as “Backpack,” has been voted the 2026 Fat Bear Week champion, edging out Bear 910 in a final round that organizers called the closest in the contest’s history.
The annual tournament, hosted by Katmai National Park and Preserve and Explore.org, celebrates the brown bears of Brooks River as they fatten up ahead of winter hibernation. This year marked the 12th edition of the event, and it drew more than 2.3 million votes from people around the world who tuned in to watch the bears bulk up on salmon throughout the summer.
A Razor-Thin Victory
The final tally left little room for doubt about how close the race truly was. Backpack’s win came down to a margin that organizers say has never been seen before in the competition’s history.
- Backpack: 103,334 votes
- Bear 910: 98,253 votes
- Final margin: 5,091 votes
Sarah Bruce, a park ranger with Katmai National Park and Preserve, said the race lived up to the hype. “This is the first time, this is unprecedented. We have never had a race this close,” Bruce said, calling it the tightest race they had seen in Fat Bear Week.
The drama didn’t stop at the final round. In the semifinals, Backpack trailed Bear 164, nicknamed “Bucky,” for most of the day before surging ahead by roughly 3,000 votes to secure his spot in the championship matchup. Sixteen bears total competed in this year’s tournament, each one tracked and photographed throughout the season as they packed on weight for hibernation.
A Family Legacy at Brooks River
Both finalists carried famous bloodlines into the competition. Backpack is the son of Bear 435, better known as Holly, who claimed the Fat Bear Week crown back in 2019. His rival, Bear 910, is the daughter of former champion Bear 409, nicknamed “Beadnose,” who won the title twice, in 2015 and again in 2018. The matchup effectively pitted two generations of Fat Bear Week royalty against one another, a storyline that likely fueled some of the intense voter interest this year.
Backpack’s own nickname has a sentimental origin story. As a cub, he developed a habit of climbing onto his mother’s back whenever the pair needed to cross Brooks River, a behavior that caught the attention of livestream viewers and park officials alike. The image of the young bear riding atop Holly stuck with fans, and the nickname followed him into adulthood.
From Near-Death to Champion
Backpack’s path to the crown wasn’t always assured. As a yearling in 2007, he suffered a serious leg injury, and park rangers and officials who witnessed the aftermath were unsure whether he would survive. Visitors who saw the injured young bear at the time shared those same doubts, according to park officials cited in coverage of his recovery.
Nearly two decades later, Backpack has not only survived but thrived, growing into one of the most recognizable bears at Brooks River. Now 20.5 years old, he stands among the older competitors in this year’s field, a fact that adds weight to his victory. Winning a title built around bulk and survival skills at an advanced age, for a bear who once appeared unlikely to live past his first year, gives this year’s championship an added layer of resonance for longtime followers of the competition.
Why Fat Bear Week Matters
Fat Bear Week has grown from a niche park program into a global phenomenon, drawing millions of votes and turning individual bears into recognizable public figures with dedicated fan bases. The tournament serves a practical purpose, too: tracking how effectively the bears of Brooks River have fattened up before hibernation offers a visible measure of the health of the local salmon run and the broader ecosystem that sustains these animals through Alaska’s harsh winters.
This year’s unusually tight race, spanning both the semifinal upset against Bucky and the narrow final-round win over Bear 910, has only heightened public engagement with the contest. Organizers and rangers alike pointed to the closeness of the vote totals as evidence of just how invested the global audience has become in the individual stories of these bears, from family lineages to survival tales.
For Backpack, the win caps a journey that began with a life-threatening injury as a yearling and now ends, at least for this season, with a title that places him alongside his mother Holly in Fat Bear Week history. Bear 910, meanwhile, falls just short of matching her own mother’s championship legacy, though her strong showing suggests she remains a formidable contender for years to come. Katmai’s rangers and the millions of voters who participated will now wait to see which bears return to compete when the next hibernation season approaches.
