Winnie-the-Pooh has a birthday this month, the anniversary of his first book. How old does he turn?

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He turns 100 on October 14, 2026, a century after Methuen published Winnie-the-Pooh in London. The bear behind him was Canadian. In 1914 an army veterinarian named Harry Colebourn paid $20 for a black bear cub at a train stop in White River, Ontario, and named her Winnie after Winnipeg. He left her at the London Zoo on his way to the Western Front. A young Christopher Robin Milne visited her there and renamed his own teddy bear after her.

The bear was Canadian and the books are English, but the original toys live in New York. Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga and Tigger have been at the New York Public Library since 1987. A British MP demanded them back in 1998 and got nowhere.

Winnie-the-Pooh turns 100 on October 14, 2026. He was named after a real Canadian bear who lived at the London Zoo until 1934.

Source: New York Public Library (centenary press release); Toronto Metropolitan University Library (Colebourn war diaries) · checked Sep 2026