World’s 50 Best Bars (2015–2025) – a decade in review
Introduction to the 50 best bars deep dive
Over the past decade, the World’s 50 Best Bars list has evolved from a Euro-American stronghold to a truly global competition. Using the annual rankings of the top 100 bars from 2015 (when the list expanded from 50 to 100 bars) through 2025 I’ve analyzed long-term trends, standout performers, emerging bar scenes and shifting philosophies in cocktail culture.
It’s important to know that there is no such thing as the 50 best bars in the world. The title of ‘best bar’ is too objective to be correct. When you think of it as a list of the actual 50 bars in the world, the list is pretty useless. But that doesn’t mean the list is in fact a waste of your time. When you take the time to look for trends or tendencies it’s a very good barometer for the global bar scene. A more appropriate title would be ‘the most influential bars’ but I guess that just doesn’t have the same (commercial) ring to it.
I’ve written a deep dive report of this list for the past 10 years, I started doing it even before the list’s publisher Drinks Int started writing about trends within the list. This year I decided to make my report less technical and less focused on the statistics, and make it more of a review of the past decade instead.
