We develop a spatiotemporal mode decomposition technique to study the spatial and temporal mode power distribution of ultrashort pulses in long spans of graded-index multimode fiber, for different input laser conditions. We find that the beam mode power content in the dispersive pulse propagation regime can be described by the Bose–Einstein law, as a result of the process of power diffusion from linear and nonlinear mode coupling among nondegenerate mode groups. In the soliton regime, the output mode power distribution approaches the Rayleigh–Jeans law.