For a ranking that maps the planet’s best bars (and restaurants, hotels and lately even vineyards), 50 Best has spent years living with a gap in the middle of its grand ranking designs. Asia got a list. North America got a list. The world got the original. Only Europe – the place that gave us the Connaught martini, the Barcelona cocktail boom and a sizable share of any global top ten – was left out. On 30 June, in Amsterdam, that changed with the launch of Europe’s 50 Best Bars 2026.
Europe’s 50 Best Bars, sponsored by Perrier, unveiled its first edition at a ceremony at De Kromhouthal in Amsterdam – the first time 50 Best has launched a new bars list since North America joined the stable in 2022.
Amsterdam The Perfect Host City For The Inaugural Europe’s 50 Best Bars
The choice of host city reads as a statement. Amsterdam is not London and not Barcelona, the two names that tend to swallow any European bar conversation. It is a city of canals, bicycles and a drinking culture that has built its reputation on craft rather than volume. Putting the inaugural party there, rather than in one of the obvious capitals, signals what the list says it wants to be: the whole continent, not just its loudest corners.
The celebration runs three days. The Bartenders’ Feast – the familiar 50 Best ritual where the ranked teams eat and drink together the night before the verdict – opens proceedings. The ceremony brings the red carpet, the drinks reception and the live countdown from No.50 to No.1, streamed on the 50 Best YouTube channel for anyone who couldn’t score an invite. A Closing Party on 1 July sends everyone home.
Europe’s 50 Best Bars 2026 Bartenders’ Bartender Award
The most telling award arrived before the countdown even began. Giorgio Bargiani, assistant director of mixology at the Connaught Bar (Carlos Place, Mayfair, London), took the Altos Bartenders’ Bartender Award – the one voted by the people who actually do the job.
His route there is worth telling. Bargiani grew up in Pisa working the floor of his aunt’s restaurant, found cocktails behind a nightclub bar during his studies, and became fixated on a single London hotel bar then blossoming under fellow Italian Agostino Perrone. His plan was not complicated: move to London, work at the Connaught. In 2014 Perrone called. Bargiani flew over on his day off and came back with a job offer, started the next month as a barback, and climbed through the team that turned the Connaught into a two-time World’s Best Bar. He and Perrone still pour their long martinis shoulder to shoulder at the rail. Last year he released his own Bar/Giani glassware range with Nude – which includes, naturally, a martini glass.
Bratislava Crashes The Europe’s 50 Best Bars Party
The second pre-ceremony award made the same point in a different accent. Mirror Bar in Bratislava took the Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award – a Slovak venue claiming the first hospitality honor on a list that could easily have defaulted to the usual capitals. For a ranking selling itself on emerging destinations, handing a Bratislava bar that title before the countdown even starts is the cleanest possible proof of intent.
No Entry Fee, No Boxes To Tick
The list comes from the votes of more than 300 anonymous, gender-balanced industry experts – bartenders, owners, drinks writers and well-traveled drinkers – split across 11 European sub-regions, each run by an Academy Chair. There is no cost to enter, be shortlisted or attend. There are no criteria. A bar does not need to stock a particular product, reach a certain age or have won anything before. Voters name seven bars from their best experiences of the previous 18 months, and for the debut each member backs up to five at home plus two or more abroad. Votes need an evidence-of-visit receipt or time-stamped photo, nobody votes for a bar they own, and a venue needs support from more than one country to make the cut.
What counts as ‘best’ is left deliberately undefined. 50 Best does not pretend there is one correct kind of bar – the spreadsheet simply collates what the voters loved. By the organizers’ own admission it is never definitive. It is a survey of current taste, and the European edition has been the conspicuous blank in that survey for a decade.
All The Awards At Europe’s 50 Best Bars 2026
The ceremony handed out the rest of the silverware first. Art, Katowice took the Campari One To Watch Award and Salvatore Calabrese – the Maestro – took the Roku Industry Icon Award. London’s Waltz (No.23) won Three Cents Best New Opening, Edinburgh’s Panda & Sons (No.20) took the Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu Award for its sub-zero menu Transcend, Paris’s De Vie (No.34) won the Ketel One Sustainable Bar Award and Hide in Budapest took the SevenRooms Best Bar Design Award. Then the one everyone stayed for: The Best Bar in Europe 2026, sponsored by Perrier.
The Big Reveal: Europe’s 50 Best Bars 2026
The title did not go to London. It did not go to Barcelona. It went to Athens. Line – the fermentation-obsessed bar that Vasilis Kyritsis and Nikos Bakoulis built inside a former art gallery in Kato Petralona – was named The Best Bar in Europe 2026, sponsored by Perrier, and The Best Bar in Greece. This is a room that makes its own wine, beer and sourdough and folds the leftovers back into the glass – its Delusional Margarita runs on ketchup, mustard and potato water. Barcelona’s Sips took No.3, which means that for the first time in four years the top bar in Europe is not in Barcelona. The blank in the middle of the map is filled – and the continent that supposedly revolves around two cities handed its first crown to neither.
50 Dunlin, Innsbruck, Austria (Best Bar in Austria)
49 Rita, Milan, Italy
48 Foco, Barcelona, Spain
47 Scarfes Bar, London, England
46 Salmon Guru, Madrid, Spain
45 Angelita, Madrid, Spain
44 Late Bloomers, Zurich, Switzerland (Best Bar in Switzerland)
43 Röda Huset, Stockholm, Sweden
42 Super Lyan, Amsterdam, Netherlands (Best Bar in the Netherlands)
41 Three Sheets Soho, London, England
40 Kwãnt Mayfair, London, England
39 Tag, Krakow, Poland (Best Bar in Poland)
38 Forbína Bar, Prague, Czech Republic
37 Tjoget, Stockholm, Sweden (Best Bar in Sweden)
36 Boadas, Barcelona, Spain
35 14 De La Rosa, Barcelona, Spain
34 De Vie, Paris, France
33 Gorilla, Thessaloniki, Greece
32 Drink Kong, Rome, Italy
31 Freni e Frizioni, Rome, Italy
30 The Clumsies, Athens, Greece
29 Gucci Giardino, Florence, Italy
28 L’Antiquario, Naples, Italy
27 Harry’s Bar, Paris, France
26 Aldea, Barcelona, Spain
25 Alma Prague, Prague, Czechia (Best Bar in Czechia)
24 Bird, Copenhagen, Denmark (Best Bar in Denmark)
23 Waltz, London, England
22 1930, Milan, Italy
21 Locale Firenze, Florence, Italy
20 Panda & Sons, Edinburgh, Scotland (Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu Award)
19 Danico, Paris, France
18 Camparino in Galleria, Milan, Italy
17 Wax On, Berlin, Germany (Best Bar in Germany)
16 Nouvelle Vague, Tirana, Albania (Best Bar in Albania)
15 Svanen, Oslo, Norway
14 Baba au Rum, Athens, Greece
13 Barro Negro, Athens, Greece
12 Tayēr + Elementary, London, England
11 Satan’s Whiskers, London, England
10 Connaught Bar, London, England (Best Bar in the UK)
9 Paradiso, Barcelona, Spain
8 Mirror Bar, Bratislava, Slovakia (Best Bar in Slovakia, Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award)
7 The Cambridge Public House, Paris, France
6 Moebius Milano, Milan, Italy (Best Bar in Italy)
5 Bar Nouveau, Paris, France (Best Bar in France)
4 Himkok, Oslo, Norway (Best Bar in Norway)
3 Sips, Barcelona, Spain (Best Bar in Spain)
2 The Bar in Front of the Bar, Athens, Greece
1 Line, Athens, Greece (Best Bar in Greece, Best Bar in Europe)
