103,344 Votes Later, Alaska's Chonkiest Bear Is a Gentle Giant Named Backpack

Bear 89 "Backpack" just won Fat Bear Week 2026 at Katmai National Park, edging rival 910 by about 5,000 votes after a bracket that briefly "broke the internet."

On the Brooks River cams this fall, one brown bear kept looking like he had packed for winter twice. Officially he is bear 89. Fans call him Backpack, a nickname from cubhood when he rode his mother Holly's back through the salmon current, and this week the internet crowned him Fat Bear Week champion. In the final round he took 103,344 votes to bear 910's 98,253, CBS News reported, according to Explore.org's tallies. Sixteen bears entered the single-elimination bracket at Alaska's Katmai National Park and Preserve. Backpack blew through early rounds by more than 100,000 votes each time, then squeaked past 164 Bucky in the semis before the nail-biter finale. Katmai staff thanked the flood of posts and campaigns that turned the week into a shared story, the kind of harmless obsession that still feels rare online.

A cub on Holly's back, a champ on the cams

The race got so loud that the first round of voting had to be extended a day after the site buckled under demand. Park officials joked that the internet was not prepared to handle this much fat bear, and every ballot still needed an email address to count. Holly, Backpack's mother, won the same crown in 2019, so the family now has two Hall of Champions plaques. Rangers once wondered whether he would survive a serious leg injury as a young bear; he recovered, went independent in 2008, and grew into the calm adult viewers root for between salmon grabs. Last year's champ, 32 Chunk, did not survive the first round this time. Otis, Beadnose, 747, and Grazer still own the repeat-winner lore, but 2026 belongs to the gentle giant with the backpack origin story.

If you missed the bracket, the cams and the park's Fat Bear pages are still there for the next salmon run, and Explore.org keeps the live feeds humming when the bears return. Pick a favorite for next year the way Katmai fans do: watch who loafs, who fishes the falls, and who somehow looks rounder every morning. A week of voting will not save a river by itself, yet it keeps hundreds of thousands of eyes on a wild place that needs the attention. Share the cams with a friend who needs a soft landing after a hard scroll.

Which Katmai bear would get your vote next fall?