The fat bears have landed.<\/p>\n
Fat Bear Week \u2014 a bracket-style, single-elimination tournament where 16 brown bears<\/a> in Alaska\u2019s Brooks River will compete to be this year\u2019s fattest bear\u00a0 \u2014 kicks off tomorrow, with voting open to the public on September 22 and concluding on September 29, when the chubby champion will be crowned.<\/p>\n The contest falls on the first day of fall and celebrates the weight put on by bears in Alaska\u2019s Katmai National Park in preparation for winter hibernation.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s contestant lineup features five bear families<\/a>, two subadults, four single adult females and five adult males \u2014 the latter category including 32 Chunk, last year\u2019s reigning winner <\/a>who weighed in at over 1,200 pounds and took the title with a broken jaw.<\/p>\n Bear 32 Chunk won the 2025 Fat Bear Week contest. T. Carmack\/Katmai National Park<\/p>\n The bears return to the Brook River every June for the salmon migration, where they fatten up for the winter, according to Popular Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n The contest, where voters judge each bear\u2019s before-and-after shots from late spring to early fall based on how successfully they bulked up over the summer, has become an online sensation, rendering over a million votes from over 100 countries last year, according to multiple media outlets.<\/p>\n Still, it started as a lark \u2014 created by former Katmai National Park ranger Mike Fitz and his team as a day-long Facebook poll, after Fitz was shocked to see side-by-side bearcam images of an animal\u2019s shocking weight transformation from early summer to late summer. <\/p>\n 1,700 voters participated, with the number steadily growing each year.<\/p>\n A bracket reveal with bears is shown for the 2026 Fat Bear Week. Sara Wolman\/Explore<\/p>\n \u201cI thought it would be a goofy thing for the rangers,\u201d Fitz told First Alert 4 <\/a>last year when speaking about the contest\u2019s origins. \u201cIt still is.\u201d<\/p>\n These days, voters are encouraged to consider each bear\u2019s life story, with Katmai ranger Sarah Bruce admitting during a recent video<\/a> announcing the contestants that Fat Bear Week voting is \u201d very subjective.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo many different things can make a bear worthy of the vote,\u201d said Bruce in the vid.<\/p>\n Before and after photos of the bears help voters determine the ultimate winner of the contest. Courtesy of explore.org<\/p>\n While the Fat Bear Week winner does not get an official prize, bear lovers can support the animals by donating to Katmai Conservancy\u2019s Otis Fund, named after Bear 480, the champ of the contest for four titles (non-consecutive) before he died in 2024. <\/p>\n