2025 Fat Bear Week winner announced: See who was named 'beefiest bruin'
Fat Bear Week has been an annual tradition since 2014.
There is now officially a 2025 Fat Bear Week winner. Congratulations to 32 Chunk, an over 1,200-pound brown bear!
The beefiest of all bruins vied for the crown to become this year's heavyweight champion during the 11th-annual competition -- a sensation that captures the attention of millions across the globe.
Chunk, who secured a grand total of 82,913 votes, beat the other finalist, 856, who received 76,665 votes.
Fat Bear Week, which started in 2014, is an annual competition where brown bears from Alaska's Katmai National Park face off in head-to-head matchups -- similar to a March Madness bracket -- with people around the world voting for who they believe is the fattest of the bunch, the National Park Service said in a press release.
"Are you ready for #FatBearWeek, where Katmai’s beefiest bruins flaunt their fluffvying for glory as if they're the wobbliest, blue-ribbon-winning Jell-O mold at a Midwest state fair?" the NPS wrote on Instagram at the start of the competition.
This year's bracket consisted of 11 bears. Along with Chunk and 856, another standout in the race for the crown included 609, who was the 2022 Fat Bear Junior champion, according to NPS.
"Fat Bear Week enables people from around the world to work to actively engage in learning about bears while cheering for their favorite competitor," Katmai Park Superintendent Mark Sturm said in a statement.
The annual competition, which is a single-elimination tournament, celebrates these rotund creatures who have successfully scarfed down enough salmon to "endure winter hibernation," the NPS said.
The bears, who live in the Brooks River area of the national park, can gain a few hundred pounds in fat before they retire for the winter, the NPS said.
From late June through September, adult male bears in this area typically weigh anywhere from 700 to 900 pounds, but some can reach up to 1,200 pounds. Adult females are slightly smaller by about one-third to one-half of the male's weight, according to the competition's website.
Specifically at Katmai National Park, bears are "drawn to the large number of salmon readily available" as the fish have long been the "lifeblood of the area," the NPS said.
For each matchup, participants were asked to "vote for the bear you believe best exemplifies fatness and success in brown bears." The bear with the most votes advanced to the next round, with only one being crowned the fattest, according to the competition's website.
Along with photos of the contestants, live cameras of each bear were also available, according to the competition's website.
Last year, 128 Grazer -- the first female bear to win back-to-back competitions -- was the first mother bear to claim victory, with about 1.2 million votes cast collectively during the event, according to the competition's website.
The back-to-back champion returned for this year's Fat Bear Week competition, with tournament officials saying she was "primed and ready to feast on this year's abundant salmon run," but ultimately lost to Chunk.