Fat Bear Week has kicked off with the junior round, the so-called Fat Bear Jr., ahead of next week’s main event. The annual online contest, hosted from Brooks River in Katmai National Park and Preserve, invites the public to weigh in on which brown bears look the rosiest after a season of salmon foraging. Naturalist Mike Fitz, who helped launch the event when he was a ranger, described the week-long junior round as an opportunity to spotlight how bears survive and what the ecosystem provides them and look at their individual success stories, as well.
The Fat Bear Jr. round runs Thursday through Friday, with voters casting ballots for their favorite adolescent ursine. The winner advances to the main event, which this year features a 12-bear field to be announced Monday. All voting is online at fatbearweek.org, and the bracket will run in a single-elimination format, with the winner declared on Sept. 30. The first round will pit eight bears in four contests to move on to the second round, while four bears receive byes in the opening phase. The online nature of the event belies the real-life drama that unfolds at Brooks Falls, where brown bears rely on salmon runs to bulk up before winter.
Katmai National Park and Preserve covers about 2,200 brown bears within a 6,562-square-mile (16,997-square-kilometer) landscape on the Alaska Peninsula. To be featured in the contest, bears must frequent the Brooks Camp area, a popular viewing spot for livestream cameras that allow people to watch the bears from afar. Because weighing bears would be dangerous, voters judge size by appearance and by the bears’ body condition as the salmon season winds down. Experts say male browns at Katmai typically weigh about 700 to 900 pounds in midsummer and can swell to more than 1,000 pounds by September or October, with some individuals reaching 1,200 pounds or more. Females are smaller, generally about half to two-thirds the size of the males.
Beyond sheer heft, factors such as a mother bear’s need to protect young while fattening up for winter also matter, Fitz notes. The contest has a storied history at Katmai: Grazer, the two-time defending Fat Bear Week champion, defeatedChunk, one of the park’s largest bears, in last year’s final. Chunk returned to Brooks River this year, but he arrived in June with a broken jaw, leaving his right-side jaw hanging loose and unlikely to heal fully. Despite the injury, Fitz said Chunk has adapted and remains among the river’s largest occupants, underscoring that the judging is based on appearance as bears prepare for winter.
The Brooks Falls area is famous for bears catching salmon out of the air as fish leap upstream. This year’s salmon run was unusually strong in some runs, which reduced competition for prime fishing spots and may produce some notably corpulent contenders in Fat Bear Week. Fitz expressed optimism that voters could see some of the fattest bears the event has tracked, noting the combination of abundant food and peak condition as the season progresses.
In Fat Bear Jr., the bracket features a semifinal lineup on Thursday that pairs the young candidates in unique matchups. Cub 128 Junior, the offspring of two-time winner Grazer, faces two cubs competing together under the banner of bear 803. 128 Junior is also the sibling of the cub killed by Chunk in the previous year’s finale, a reminder of the park’s fragile drama as rivalries and timelines unfold. The other semifinal pairs siblings from spring’s litter of bear 26: 26 Female, smaller and lighter in color, against 26 Male, who is bolder and more assertive, a dynamic that could matter if food is tight. The mix of heritage, temperament, and late-season appetite promises an entertaining prelude to the main tournament, which will crown the fattest bear on Sept. 30.
Public participation remains the defining feature of Fat Bear Week. People can tune in via livestreams and cast their ballots online, with the winner of Fat Bear Jr. advancing to face the rest in the final rounds. While the media spotlight often centers on the tallest or most famous bear, organizers emphasize that the event highlights the bears’ adaptability and the ecosystem that supports their seasonal fattening. The annual contest began in 2014 as a way to celebrate the resiliency of brown bears in a region shaped by the rhythms of sockeye runs and the changing seasons, and it has since become a widely watched ritual that combines wildlife biology, public engagement, and a touch of seasonal pageantry.
As Fat Bear Week progresses through the fall, Katmai researchers and rangers will continue to monitor bear behavior, noting how changes in salmon availability and environmental conditions influence the bears’ weight and competition. For viewers, the event offers a window into the lives of these powerful predators who rely on a summer and fall bounty to survive a northern winter, and it invites a deeper appreciation for the intricate balance of Brooks River’s alpine ecosystem.