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Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Fat Bear Week 2025 is over, and 32 “Chunk” is the reigning champion. The enormous Katmai brown bear defeated longtime rival Bear 856 by 96,350 votes to 63,725 on September 30, 2025, after an unusually abundant salmon run helped several competitors build remarkable fat reserves. The official tally for the 2025 competition reached 1,716,902 votes.
Chunk’s victory was especially memorable because he competed with a permanently damaged jaw, had previously finished runner-up twice, and had become one of the most divisive bears in the competition. The bears were not literally weighed for the contest, however, and “thiccest” is a playful description—not a scientific ranking of Katmai’s heaviest bear.
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This article covers the completed 2025 tournament. As of August 10, 2026, the National Park Service lists Fat Bear Week 2026 as “coming soon,” but has not published a 2026 bracket or contestant roster.
What is Fat Bear Week?
Fat Bear Week is an annual online, single-elimination public-vote tournament featuring wild brown bears that spend the summer and early fall around Brooks River in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve. The bears are shown in before-and-after images from the feeding season, and people vote for the bear they believe best represents fatness and survival success.
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The event is a partnership among the National Park Service, Explore.org and the Katmai Conservancy. The bears do not knowingly enter, perform tricks or receive special training. They remain wild animals going about the behaviors that make the contest possible: fishing, eating, competing, raising cubs and putting on enough body fat to survive winter.
The idea began as Fat Bear Tuesday in 2014, when voting took place on Facebook. The first full Fat Bear Week followed in 2015. Its bracket is loosely modeled on March Madness, but the judging is intentionally subjective. Voters may respond to a bear’s size, visible weight gain, fishing skill, maternal effort, resilience, personality or backstory—not simply to which animal looks widest.
That distinction matters. Winning Fat Bear Week does not prove that a bear is the heaviest animal in Katmai, and the park does not place every competitor on a scale. The official history and results are collected by the National Park Service and Explore.org.
Why do Katmai’s bears become so enormous?
The spectacle is really a seasonal survival strategy. Katmai’s brown bears spend the warmer months eating as much high-calorie food as they can before entering their winter dens. During hibernation, they do not eat or drink and may lose roughly one-third of their body weight.
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Large males may weigh approximately 700 to 900 pounds in midsummer, exceed 1,000 pounds by fall and reach estimated weights near 1,400 pounds. Those figures are estimates, not routine weigh-ins of free-ranging animals. A bear’s apparent size also changes with posture, wet fur, camera angle and the stage of the feeding season.
Females face an additional biological challenge. They must build enough reserves to survive winter while producing milk, protecting cubs and preparing for future reproduction. Cubs have a different problem: they need to grow rapidly in proportion to their bodies while also storing enough fat to make it through the winter.
Katmai generally calls these animals brown bears. “Grizzly bear” and “coastal brown bear” describe forms of the same species, but “Katmai brown bear” is the clearest term for this story.
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Why did the 2025 bears look especially “thicc”?
The strongest explanation was food availability. Reports from National Geographic and the Associated Press described the 2025 salmon run as unusually abundant.
When salmon are plentiful, bears do not have to crowd as intensely around a few prime fishing spots. More animals can spread out along the river, fish successfully and spend less energy fighting over access. That combination—more calories and potentially less competition—allowed several bears to accumulate striking amounts of fat.
Explore.org creator Mike Fitz described the 2025 bears as “extremely fat,” and organizers expected the field to include some of the fattest bears seen in the event. That is a reasonable description of an unusually impressive year, but it should not be reported as a formal all-time record: there was no complete scientific weigh-in establishing that the 2025 competitors were definitively the heaviest Fat Bear Week field ever.
The 12 Fat Bear Week 2025 entrants
Katmai contains roughly 2,200 brown bears, while about 80 bears may frequent the Brooks River area during the active season. Only a small, camera-visible subset is selected for the competition. Selection depends partly on whether useful before-and-after photographs are available, so the bracket is not a census of the biggest bears in the park.
The full 2025 field, based on the official Explore.org bear biographies and the published bracket, was:
| Bear | Why people remembered the competitor | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 128 Jr. / “Biggie” | Grazer’s yearling and the sibling of the cub that died after an encounter with Chunk in 2024. The young bear first won Fat Bear Junior. | Beat 609; lost to 602. |
| 609 | A nearly five-year-old female, formerly associated with 910’s family, beginning to live more independently. | Lost to 128 Jr. |
| 602 / “Floatato” | A very large male known for his relaxed lounging behavior and a productive year made easier by abundant salmon. | Beat 128 Jr.; lost to Chunk. |
| 503 | A large, powerful male noted for unusually tolerant and social behavior around other bears. | Lost to 901. |
| 901 | A large female who had previously lost her first known litter and returned to the 2025 field in imposing condition. | Beat 503; lost to Chunk. |
| 32 “Chunk” | A massive male with a permanently damaged jaw who adapted his fishing and eating behavior. | Champion. |
| 26 | An experienced mother raising twin cubs and avoiding unnecessary danger near the falls. | Lost to 909. |
| 909 | Daughter of 2018 champion 409 “Beadnose.” She had lost a litter but continued feeding successfully. | Beat 26; lost to Grazer. |
| 128 “Grazer” | The two-time defending champion, an experienced mother and highly defensive female. | Beat 909; lost to 856. |
| 99 | A younger male gaining size and moving toward the upper levels of the Brooks River hierarchy. | Lost to 856. |
| 856 | An older, exceptionally large male who had dominated the river for years and increasingly relied on patience. | Runner-up. |
| 910 | A skilled female angler and former mother who had an unusually productive year as a single bear. | Lost to 856. |
How the 2025 bracket unfolded
Fat Bear Junior opened the season’s voting. On September 18 and 19, 128’s yearling defeated 26’s female cub by 20,793 votes to 10,867, earning a place in the main Fat Bear Week bracket as 128 Jr. / Biggie.
The main bracket was revealed on September 22. Voting took place from September 23 through September 30, with archived Explore.org instructions listing daily voting windows from noon to 9 p.m. Eastern and one vote per email address.
| Date | Matchup | Winner |
|---|---|---|
| September 23 | 128 Jr. vs. 609 | 128 Jr. |
| September 23 | 901 vs. 503 | 901 |
| September 24 | 909 vs. 26 | 909 |
| September 24 | 856 vs. 99 | 856 |
| September 25 | 602 vs. 128 Jr. | 602 |
| September 25 | Chunk vs. 901 | Chunk |
| September 26 | Grazer vs. 909 | Grazer |
| September 26 | 856 vs. 910 | 856 |
| September 29, semifinal | Chunk vs. 602 | Chunk |
| September 29, semifinal | 856 vs. Grazer | 856 |
| September 30, final | Chunk vs. 856 | Chunk, 96,350–63,725 |
The final ended two years in which Chunk had reached the championship round only to lose to Grazer. It also ended Grazer’s attempt at a third consecutive title. The complete results and official vote total are archived on Explore.org’s Fat Bear Week page.
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Why Chunk became the story of Fat Bear Week
Chunk’s 2025 campaign combined physical size, resilience and a complicated history.
He returned to Brooks River in June with a broken jaw. No one officially witnessed the injury, but its timing and appearance strongly suggested that it may have resulted from a fight with another bear. The damage is considered permanent, and it made fishing and eating more difficult.
Rather than stop feeding, Chunk adapted. According to his Explore.org biography, he changed how he ate, avoided some confrontations and continued gaining weight. Media reports estimated him at roughly 1,200 pounds or more; that number should be understood as an estimate, not a measurement from a competition scale.
Chunk was also a divisive finalist because of what happened in 2024. After one of Grazer’s cubs fell into Chunk’s fishing area, Chunk attacked it. The cub later died from its injuries. It is important to describe the event accurately without assigning human motives: this was dangerous bear behavior in a competitive wild ecosystem, not evidence that Chunk was acting out of revenge or personal malice.
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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsThat history made the 2025 final emotionally charged for fans. Some viewers saw a remarkably injured bear that had adapted and survived; others remembered the loss of Grazer’s cub. The tournament’s game-like format can make bears feel like sports personalities, but their lives involve real injuries, competition, motherhood and death.
Grazer’s interrupted three-peat
Grazer was more than a large bear with a popular name. She won Fat Bear Week in 2023 and 2024, becoming the first mother bear to win the title in 2024. Her 2025 yearling’s victory in Fat Bear Junior gave the family another strong storyline, particularly because the yearling was the sibling of the cub that died after the 2024 encounter with Chunk.
Grazer defeated 909 in the main bracket but lost to 856 in the September 29 semifinal. The result removed the possibility of a third consecutive championship and sent 856 to the final against Chunk.
The previous year had already shown why the contest cannot be separated entirely from the harsher realities of bear ecology. In 2024, the National Park Service postponed the Fat Bear Week bracket after Bear 469 killed Bear 402 on camera. The NPS account of the incident is a useful reminder that these are wild animals, not entertainers or domesticated contestants.
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What are fans actually voting for?
There is no single objective judging formula. A voter may choose:
- Visible body-fat gain: the dramatic change between early- and late-season photographs.
- Fishing success: the ability to turn the salmon run into usable energy.
- Survival skill: including patience, adaptation and avoiding unnecessary fights.
- Maternal effort: raising cubs while finding enough food for both mother and offspring.
- Social status: dominance, territory and the ability to hold a productive place on the river.
- Personality and narrative: the traits that make a particular bear memorable to people watching the cams.
This is why “the fattest bear” is best treated as the contest’s popular shorthand rather than a verified scientific title. A bear can win because it appears extremely large, because its before-and-after transformation is striking, or because its story represents successful preparation for winter particularly well.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Did fans really “lose it”?
The phrase is colorful, but the measurable evidence is substantial. The official 2025 tally exceeded 1.7 million votes, and Explore.org reported that its 2025 fan-made campaign-poster contest received more submissions than ever. Bearcam communities, social-media campaigns and online fan guides have helped turn individual bears into recognizable personalities.
The enthusiasm was also not limited to U.S. voters. Fat Bear Week is hosted by a U.S. national park, but participation is international; the National Park Service reported that more than one million votes came from 100 countries in 2024. The 2025 official total was larger still, although the supplied results do not provide a country-by-country breakdown.
Fans debated Chunk’s injury and history, Grazer’s maternal story, 901’s comeback and 602’s famous willingness to lounge. Those debates are part of the appeal, but they should not obscure what the vote represents: a playful public celebration built around genuine wildlife behavior.
How do officials estimate a bear’s size?
Free-ranging adult bears are not routinely captured and placed on scales for Fat Bear Week. Doing so would be dangerous, disruptive and impractical. Rangers and media reports generally use visual estimates based on known bear histories, photographs and comparisons.
Past Katmai materials have also described non-invasive laser- or LiDAR-style scanning to estimate body volume in selected circumstances. That kind of technology can help researchers understand body condition without handling the animal, but it does not mean that every bear in the bracket has an exact official weight.
For that reason, wording such as “estimated at about 1,200 pounds” is more accurate than stating that Chunk—or any other competitor—“weighed” a precise number.
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Can you still watch the bears?
Yes. Explore.org maintains Katmai bear cams and archived Fat Bear Week material, including contestant biographies and past results. Watching online does not involve handling or feeding the bears, and it lets viewers observe them from a safe distance.
People can also visit Katmai, but Brooks River is a remote wilderness destination rather than a roadside national-park attraction. Travel plans should be based on current National Park Service access information, operating-season details and bear-safety guidance. Bearcam familiarity is not a substitute for wilderness preparation, and visitors must treat every bear as wild.
What happens next?
As of August 10, 2026, 32 Chunk remains the reigning Fat Bear Week champion. The National Park Service’s Fat Bear Week history page lists the 2026 event as coming soon, but no official 2026 bracket or roster has been published in the available information.
Until then, the 2025 result stands: Chunk finally converted two previous runner-up finishes into a championship, overcoming a damaged jaw and a field made unusually heavy by abundant salmon. The title celebrates fatness, but the more revealing story is how these bears use food, social skill and adaptation to survive the winter ahead.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who won Fat Bear Week 2025?
Bear 32 “Chunk” won Fat Bear Week 2025, defeating Bear 856 in the final by 96,350 votes to 63,725. Chunk’s victory was announced on September 30, 2025.
Was Chunk officially the heaviest bear in Katmai?
No. Chunk was estimated at roughly 1,200 pounds or more, but free-ranging bears are not routinely weighed for the contest. Fat Bear Week is a subjective public-vote competition celebrating fatness and survival success, not a scientific ranking of every bear’s weight.
Can people still watch Katmai’s bears after Fat Bear Week?
Yes. Explore.org maintains Katmai bear cams and archived Fat Bear Week content. In-person visits are also possible, but Katmai is a remote wilderness area, so visitors should follow current National Park Service access and bear-safety guidance.
Are Fat Bear Week bears harmed or trained for the competition?
The competition is conducted through online voting and does not require bears to be handled or trained. The bears remain wild, however, and the playful tournament format can obscure the reality that they compete for food and mates, suffer injuries and sometimes kill one another.
The Bottom Line
Fat Bear Week 2025’s “thiccest” field was fueled by an unusually strong salmon run, but the champion was not chosen by a scale. Voters chose 32 “Chunk,” whose estimated 1,200-plus-pound body, permanent jaw injury, adaptation and complicated history carried him past 856 in the final. Grazer’s two-year reign ended in the semifinals, and the official competition drew 1,716,902 votes worldwide.
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