On 30 June 2026, the bar industry gathered at De Kromhouthal in Amsterdam for something that had never happened before: the unveiling of Europe’s 50 Best Bars, the first dedicated European ranking from the organisation behind The World’s 50 Best Bars. Asia and North America had already received their own regional lists in previous years. Europe, despite supplying a large share of the world ranking’s regulars, had not. That gap has now been filled, and the inaugural edition offers a useful moment to look at how the list is actually put together, and which countries and cities came out on top.
All words and photography by Albert van Beeck Calkoen
How the list is compiled
The ranking is the work of the Europe’s 50 Best Bars Academy, a panel of more than 300 independent bar professionals, drinks writers and industry figures based across the continent. The Academy is split into eleven sub-regions, each overseen by an Academy Chair responsible for recruiting a geographically balanced group of voters within that territory. Each voter is asked to name their seven best bar experiences from the eighteen months preceding the voting deadline. There are no fixed technical criteria, no scorecards and no checklist of categories to weigh. The result is a straightforward computation of individual votes cast confidentially on a secure platform, with the outcome kept under wraps until the live announcement. Geographically, the list covers every country west of the Caspian Sea, from Iceland to Armenia and Azerbaijan, with Russia excluded. In its first year, the ranking drew in bars from 22 cities.
A Greek top two, and an end to Barcelona’s run
The headline result was Line, a bar built inside a former art warehouse in the Athens neighbourhood of Kato Petralona, taking the number one spot. Founded by Vasilis Kyritsis and Nikos Bakoulis, the bar built its reputation on a circular approach to ingredients, turning kitchen byproducts into cocktails such as the Delusional Margarita, made with ketchup, mustard and potato water. Athens took second place too, with The Bar in Front of the Bar, and added three further entries further down the list: Barro Negro, Baba au Rum and The Clumsies. A sixth Greek bar, Gorilla in Thessaloniki, also featured. That top spot marked a shift. For the previous three years, whenever European bars were ranked within the global World’s 50 Best Bars list, a Barcelona venue had held the highest position, Sips in 2024 and 2025, Paradiso in 2022. Sips still performed strongly here, taking third place and the title of Best Bar in Spain, but for the first time in four years, the top European position went elsewhere.
Italy leads the country count
While Greece took the headlines with its one-two finish, Italy ended up with the most entries of any country: nine bars in total. Milan led the Italian showing with four venues, including Moebius Milano at number six, named Best Bar in Italy. Florence and Rome each placed two bars, and Naples contributed one. It is a spread across four cities rather than a concentration in one, which says something about how far Italian cocktail culture now reaches beyond Milan and Rome. Spain followed closely with eight bars, six of them in Barcelona (Sips, Paradiso, Aldea, 14 De La Rosa, Boadas and Foco) and two in Madrid (Angelita and Salmon Guru). The UK also reached eight, split between London and a single entry for Edinburgh’s Panda & Sons. London itself supplied more bars than any other single city, seven in total, led by the Connaught Bar at number ten. That count earned London the title of Europe’s cocktail capital for this edition, ahead of Barcelona’s six and Athens’ five. Paris placed five bars as well, led by Bar Nouveau at number five, and Milan’s four rounded out the cities with the strongest individual showings.
Amsterdam and Super Lyan
The Netherlands had a single representative on the list, but it was a fitting one given where the ceremony itself took place. Super Lyan, the Amsterdam bar founded as the local branch of Ryan Chetiyawardana’s Lyan Group, placed 42nd and was named Best Bar in the Netherlands. It remains the country’s sole entry, a reminder that Amsterdam’s cocktail scene, while gaining international recognition, is still working from a smaller base than the established capitals above it. Whether that changes when the next edition is voted on, drawing again on eighteen months of visits from the Academy’s 300-plus voters, will say a good deal about the direction the city’s bars are heading.
Beyond the ranking: the special awards
Before the top 50 was read out, the evening at De Kromhouthal worked through a set of special award categories, several of them decided ahead of the ceremony and announced separately from the main vote.
The one bartenders themselves tend to watch most closely is the Altos Bartenders’ Bartender Award, voted for entirely by fellow professionals rather than the wider Academy. It went to Giorgio Bargiani, assistant director of mixology at the Connaught Bar in London. Bargiani grew up working the floor of his aunt’s restaurant in Pisa before finding cocktails behind a nightclub bar during his studies. His attention settled early on the Connaught, then developing under fellow Italian Agostino Perrone, and in 2014 that interest turned into an offer: Bargiani flew to London on his day off, came back with a job as a barback, and worked his way up through a team that has since taken the Connaught to two World’s Best Bar titles. He and Perrone still work the martini trolley together.
The Roku Industry Icon Award recognises a career rather than a single bar, and this year it went to Salvatore Calabrese, known across the trade simply as The Maestro. His influence on London bartending runs back more than five decades, from establishing Dukes London as a reference point for the martini to his current role at Velvet by Salvatore Calabrese in the Corinthia.
The Campari One To Watch Award, aimed at a bar seen as on the rise rather than already established, was given to Art in Katowice, Poland. The bar’s menus are developed in a dedicated back-of-house space its team calls the Art Lab, where drinks take their structure from artistic disciplines such as tattoo work, photography, fashion and architecture rather than conventional flavour categories. One example built around the Pop Art movement of the 1950s and 60s reworks the colours of Chupa Chups lollipops into a mix of gin, Italian bitter aperitif and rum.
Mirror Bar in Bratislava, which placed eighth overall and took the title of Best Bar in Slovakia, also picked up the Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award. The bar is built around a striking central tree feature in an emerald-toned room, and serves drinks such as the Lantern of Infinity in vessels handcrafted by local Slovak artists.
Panda & Sons in Edinburgh, the only Scottish entry on the list at number 20, won the Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu Award for Transcend, a menu built entirely around sub-zero freezing techniques. In Paris, De Vie, one of the newer additions to the city’s scene at number 34, took the Ketel One Sustainable Bar Award. London’s Waltz, at number 23, was recognised with the Three Cents Best New Opening Award, while Hide in Budapest won the SevenRooms Best Bar Design Award for an interior judged striking and carefully considered rather than simply decorative.
At number 34, De Vie in Paris took the Ketel One Sustainable Bar Award, and the bar makes an unusually literal case for the title: there is no ice anywhere on the premises. Chilling is handled instead through custom ceramics and dedicated freezing techniques that keep drinks sub-zero without the energy and water cost of producing and storing ice. The fridges and freezers run on renewable energy, with a tenth of the bar’s energy costs reinvested directly into sustainability projects, and the sourcing follows the seasons rather than a fixed year-round menu. The commitment extends to staff terms as well, with healthcare cover beyond the statutory minimum and contracted working weeks capped at 48 hours, overtime included. Opened only in 2025, De Vie has built its reputation on this combination of environmental and operational discipline as much as on the drinks themselves.
Together, the special awards work as a counterweight to the main list. Where the top 50 still leans towards a handful of established cocktail capitals, the individual prizes went to Katowice, Bratislava and Budapest as often as to London or Paris, suggesting the Academy was keen to signal that the ranking’s reach extends well past the cities usually associated with European cocktail culture.
