Fat Bear Week Semi-Finals: Backpack and Bear #910 Advance to Final

Fat Bear Week Semi-Finals Deliver a Photo Finish

Fat Bear Week semi-finals voting ended. Two very different storylines emerged. Bear #910 rolled past Bear #132 and her three cubs in the first matchup, a result that surprised plenty of fans who'd been watching the bracket closely all week long. Then Bear #89, better known as Backpack, survived a daylong seesaw against Bear #164, Bucky Dent, in what stands as the closest contest of the 2026 bracket. It's the tightest race yet. And Backpack advances to face Bear #910 in the final.

Voting opens September 29 at noon EDT. It closes at 9pm EDT. That window translates to 9am to 6pm Pacific and 8am to 5pm Alaska time, which is the kind of detail you don't need unless you're actually sitting there watching the clock and wondering whether you've still got time to cast a ballot. The winner gets crowned September 29. It caps a tournament that began with a field now whittled to two. And that's it. They're down to the final pair.

Backpack Outlasts Bucky Dent in a Nail-Biter

Backpack and Bucky Dent traded the lead all day. The margin stayed tight. Neither bear could pull away. And when the counting stopped, Backpack had eked out the win, a result that felt like the closest match of the year so far and a fitting one for a semifinal that pitted two of the best nicknames at the Brooks River against each other.

Backpack is 20.5 years old, the son of 2019 Fat Bear Week champion and Katmai legend Bear #435, Holly. His name comes from a habit he picked up as a cub, climbing onto his mother's back while the pair navigated the Brooks River waters. Survival has never been guaranteed for him. In 2007, as a yearling, he came out of the spring with a serious leg injury that prevented him from walking properly. Rangers feared he would not make it through the season. With his mother's help, he recovered and grew into a consistent resident at Brooks Falls.

He's got a quiet strength. It's there despite his imposing frame, and he's never shown aggression toward competitors, not once, not in any encounter we've seen. But he prefers to hang out slightly downstream, on his favorite rock.

Bucky Dent Invented His Own Fishing Method

Bucky Dent, a 9.5-year-old adult male, brings a different kind of resume. He is so good at catching fish that he invented a new way to locate them as a subadult. He first appeared in the area in 2019, and rangers do not know the identity of his parents. In 2021, as a relatively smaller subadult surrounded by bigger competition, he struggled to secure a good fishing spot at Brooks Falls and the river.

So he improvised. He positioned himself in the deepest plunge pool under the cascade of Brooks Falls, where he could catch fish welling up from the pool below, jumping through the air, or falling from the falls above. No other bear has used that technique. Now that Bucky Dent ranks among the largest bears, he fishes wherever he wants. He also will not hesitate to use his size to intimidate other bears away from preferred spots, which has moved him up the bear hierarchy.

Both Backpack and Bucky still have not reached full size, so it would not be surprising to see them battling for the Fat Bear Week title for years to come.

That is a problem for whoever faces them next. About this year's bracket. The bear who actually advanced is the one who survived a leg injury two decades ago, not the one who reinvented fishing.

Bear #910 Sails Past a Fan Favorite

Bear #910 beat Bear #132 and her three cubs in the first semifinal. That ended one of the most compelling runs of Fat Bear Week 2026. Bear #132, sometimes called Spaghetti by fans because she had three "meatballs" this year, emerged from slumber with three spring cubs, her fourth known litter, and around mid-July, one cub somehow ended up on its own and was later spotted wandering the Brooks River area unaccompanied. The cub tried approaching other families. But they're not always kind. It was chased away or ignored.

Cubs without a mother's protection face attacks from other bears, starvation, and other life-threatening risks. It's brutal out there. Bear #132's cub, after several days alone, managed to survive and reunited with the family, and you can recognize her by the inverted V pattern above her muzzle on her forehead. And this was her first year competing in Fat Bear Week.

Bear #910? She's got a story. In 2022, she did something wild: she blended her family with her sister Bear #909's family, adopting her sister's 2.5-year-old female yearling cub while she herself had a spring cub, a move that's exceptionally rare in the wild and believed to be only the second such case at Katmai. She separated from that litter in late spring 2025. She's lived alone since. She fishes where and when she wants, and she can fish successfully throughout much of the river, including the lip of Brooks Falls, where you can recognize her by her peculiar and frequent head lifts, a quirk she doesn't do anywhere else. She has somewhat short ears and a prominent brow ridge. And she made her Fat Bear Week debut in 2025.

Why Some Bears Get Names and Others Get Numbers

Not every bear at Katmai has an official nickname, and that is by design. A designated Bear Monitor observes the bears, notes their physical characteristics, and tracks their behavioral habits. If an adult or subadult bear is seen utilizing the Brooks River on three separate occasions in a single monitoring season, the bear is assigned a three-digit ID number. Regulars all get numbers. Nicknames get used, but the National Parks Service does not encourage the practice, to avoid humanizing the bears.

So Spaghetti and Dancing Queen, as fans call Bear #910 for her signature head toss, remain unofficial labels. The numbers are what count.

What Comes Next in Fat Bear Week

Only two chunky specimens remain in Fat Bear Week 2026. Voting in the final starts September 29 at noon EDT and runs until 9pm EDT, with the champion crowned that same day. Ballots can be cast at explore.org.

• Final matchup: Bear #89 (Backpack) vs. Bear #910
• Voting window: 12pm to 9pm EDT on September 29
• Pacific time: 9am to 6pm PDT
• Alaska time: 8am to 5pm AKDT

A correction accompanied the semifinal results: an earlier version had the incorrect age of Backpack. The figure now stands at 20.5 years old.

The Fat Bear Week semi-finals are done. Voters got a final pairing. It's a quiet survivor against a rare adoptive mother. One of them walks away with the title, and the other walks away with a fan base that, because of everything this contest has built over the years and because of how deeply people connect to these bears, will likely be back next year. And that's the whole story.