Bear 89 'Backpack' Wins Fat Bear Week 2026, Beats Bear 910 by 5,081 Votes

Katmai National Park and Preserve announced its 2026 Fat Bear Week champion Tuesday night, Sept. 29: bear 89, known as Backpack, beat bear 910 in the final round of the annual contest that celebrates Alaska's brown bears bulking up for hibernation.

According to explore.org, the nonprofit that runs the livestream cameras at Brooks River, Backpack took the title with 103,334 votes to bear 910's 98,253, a margin of 5,081 votes. CBS News, Yahoo News and WSGW all reported this as the closest final this week, capping a bracket that started with 16 bears on Sept. 22.

Backpack is no stranger to Brooks River. His mother, Holly, won Fat Bear Week herself back in 2019, and she brought Backpack to the river as a first-year cub in 2006, according to park officials. He earned his nickname by climbing onto her back while the two waded through the water.

Katmai park ranger Sarah Bruce told Alaska Public Media that Backpack, now roughly 20 years old and weighing an estimated 1,000 to 1,200 pounds, has been a fixture on the park's live cams since 2012. "He's a familiar bear," Bruce said. "People have watched him his whole life." Some fans rallied around him this year specifically because of his age, arguing, as Bruce put it, that younger bears "will still have chances to win" in future contests.

Backpack's backstory includes a rough patch. He suffered a significant leg injury as a young bear that had park staff questioning whether he'd survive, according to CBS News and USA Today. He recovered and became independent in 2008. The exact year of the injury is fuzzy across the coverage: CBS News, Yahoo News and WSGW peg it to when he was "about 2 years old," while USA Today and Alaska Public Media both date it to 2007. Either way, he pulled through, and Bruce noted he now carries fewer scars than most adult males his age, a sign, she said, that he's "more of a stoic presence on the river" who avoids unnecessary fights.

The contest itself keeps growing, and the outlets don't fully agree on by how much. USA Today reported "a record-breaking more than 2.5 million votes" were cast during this year's competition, while Alaska Public Media put the number at "more than 2.3 million." Both figures are well above the 1.7 million votes the National Park Service recorded in 2025, so the overall trend of more people voting every year is not in dispute even if the precise headcount is.

The bracket expanded to 16 bears this year from 12 in 2025, and for the first time it included whole bear families, a nod to what park officials called a record number of mothers and cubs at the river this summer. One of those families, bear 132 and her three spring cubs, made it to the semifinals before losing to 910, according to PBS.

Voting wasn't smooth. CBS News and Yahoo News both reported the polls had to be extended an extra day after the site was overwhelmed, with Katmai officials joking on social media that "the internet was not prepared to handle this much fat bear." Voters had to submit an email address with each vote for it to count, a detail multiple outlets flagged as part of how the park tried to keep the tally legitimate against a flood of traffic.

Katmai officials tied the win to broader themes in their announcement, writing that "just like America's 250th anniversary, traditions endure because people keep them alive," and that this year's contest "honored resilience in our bears and in our nation." That's the park's own framing, not an independent assessment, but it's consistent across the CBS News, Yahoo News and WSGW writeups, all of which ran the same statement in full.

Last year's champion, Chunk, officially bear 32, was knocked out in the very first round this year by Bucky, who then lost to Backpack in the semifinals, according to The Independent and PBS. Bucky's run means bear 480 Otis, the four-time champion from 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2021, remains the only bear to win more than once, and he hasn't been spotted at Brooks River since his last title.

The park has not announced when nominations open for the 2027 contest, but if this year's pattern holds, expect the bracket to grow again and the vote count to climb past 2.5 million.