Fat Bear Week 2025 Has Crowned A Winner! See The Results

Fat Bear Week 2025 has crowned its winner!

On Tuesday, Sept. 30, voting in the 2025 Fat Bear Week competition concluded. The final match-up in the single-elimination, bracket-style contest came down to Chunk (also known as Bear 32) and Bear 856. Chunk ended up winning the final round with 96,362 votes, beating Bear 856’s 63,729 votes.

After voting closed, Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve and Explore.org announced the winner of its annual competition, which lets fans vote online to determine which Katmai bear “best exemplifies fatness and success in brown bears” as the park’s wildlife bulk up for hibernation.

“And with that, your 2025 Fat Bear Week comes to an end. Thank you to everyone who has voted! For the first time ever, 32 “Chunk” takes home the gold- or should we say red (because of all the salmon he ate),” Katmai National Park wrote on Facebook.

Chunk had the odds stacked against him this year. According to Explore.org, the naturally large bear arrived at Brooks River this year with a broken jaw, likely the result of a fight with another brown bear over a mate. Bears at Katmai National Park don’t receive veterinary care, so animal experts were unsure how Chunk would adapt to his injury. The bear managed to pivot quickly, learning how to catch and consume salmon with his injured jaw. Chunk’s perseverance allowed him to bulk up and get a spot in the final 2025 Fat Bear Week mashup.

Bear 856 is also a large, male brown bear, who is easily identifiable to park rangers due to the animal’s unusual habit of licking his lips — a behavior not typically observed in brown bears. Per Explore.org, Bear 856 was one of the most dominant male bears in Katmai National Park from 2011 to 2023. Now that Bear 856 is older, he is more careful about picking his battles, but remains an expert at bulking up for hibernation.

Fat Bear Week 2025, which took place Sept. 23 to 30 this year, is determined in a bracket-style tournament. Users voted each day to decide which brown bears at Katmai National Park — who are busy feasting on salmon to pack on pounds for winter — deserve the top spot.

Katmai National Park helps fans to determine which brown bear is most worthy of the Fat Bear Week title by setting up livestream cameras around the park to take a peek at the contenders as they chow down on their freshly-caught salmon.

This national park — which requires Alaskan travelers to hop on a boat or plane to visit — is home to approximately 2,200 brown bears, and as winter is around the corner, fattening up is one of the most important things for these animals to do. A bear can lose one-third of its body weight during hibernation, and females can’t become pregnant unless they have enough reserves — roughly 25% body fat.

“A fat bear is a successful bear. Fat bears mean they are healthy bears and ready for the winter,” the National Park Service (NPS) said.

Salmon also plays a massive role in this very special week, as Katmai National Park boasts one of the world’s healthiest sockeye salmon runs. Salmon are critical, and bears can consume more than 40 in a single day, translating to around 100,000 calories. Without this abundance, reproduction rates fall, cub survival drops, and entire ecosystems can shift.

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Katmai National Park also helps organize the event as a way to draw global attention to a warming climate, as salmon require cold water to thrive, and rising temperatures threaten their annual runs.

“Fat Bear Week raises awareness by bringing the relationship between the bears and the salmon to the forefront,” the NPS states. “Preservation of a healthy ecosystem for Brooks River is essential for all the animals of Katmai.”

Chunk ends Grazer (Bear 128) ‘s two-year winning streak. She took home the Fat Bear crown in 2023 and 2024, making her the first mother bear to win. She competed this year alongside her yearling cub. Grazer is known for her assertive fishing style and willingness to challenge larger males.

Despite the fierce competition at Fat Bear Week, Katmai and the NPS say that any bear who can put on some extra weight for the winter is a winner.

“No matter which bear gets the most votes in the Fat Bear Week competition, they are all winners,” the NPS said in its press release. “Bears get fat to survive. What enables their survival is the health of Katmai’s ecosystem: the sustained run of salmon, clean water, and thriving flora and fauna.”