Europe’s 50 Best Bars 2026 has landed, with Line named No.1. A glitter cannon has been shot into the European cocktail scene with a scream: Athens, baby.
Here’s what the inaugural list tells us.
Europe’s 50 Best Bars unveiled
Europe’s 50 Best Bars has arrived to give the lucky few a lovely new shiny thing to put on their menu, website, tote bag, or possibly the forehead of anyone who needs to be told which bars they simply must visit from press releases.
At a ceremony in Amsterdam this week spirits were certainly high as 50 Best finally gave Europe its own dedicated spotlight. North America and Asia have their regional rankings, now it’s the turn of the continent that brought you smelly cheese and Jedward to create the hottest new game in the trade: The Big 50 Best Bar Crawl Checklist. I’ve pretty much only been to the London ones, to be honest. I’ve hardly lived.
More than 300 anonymous drinks experts from across Europe settle the debate, taking into account their own best bar experiences over the previous 18 months. The marketing bumf tells us they’re a gender-balanced ragtag crew of bartenders, bar owners, drinks media and well-travelled cocktail connoisseurs. Yet curiously, I wasn’t invited?
The best bar in Europe?
Line: Not your standard cocktail temple
Anyway, the thing about these lists that’s interesting is not what bar won, but what kind of bar won. Line Athens is not a chandelier and velvet rope job. It sits in Kato Petralona, away from the obvious central bar scene, inside a former gallery space. It is part cocktail bar, part winery, part brewery, part sourdough starter factory, part fermentation bunker.
From the team behind The Clumsies, Line is an industro-Mediterranean house of yeast, low waste, fruit wines, beers, vinegars, syrups, breads, and the kind of circular thinking that makes most bars look like they are still colouring inside the lines with a blunt crayon. See a cocktail that helped put it on the map, the Delusional Margarita, a combo of Reposado Tequila with mustard, ketchup, potato water and spices. No, really.
Its Why-Ins – wines made from fruit that are not grapes – are another signature. Line also uses leftovers in drinks, makes its own bread, and seems to get the difficult-to-nail day/night balance right, waking up from a sleepy, sunny casual coffee spot to a lively we-simply-must-go-to destination.
London boasts the best newcomer with Waltz
My Big Fat Greek Bar Crawl
Line has what the best bars are expected to have now: Perspective. A reason to exist beyond making a Negroni non-alcoholic and calling it a No-groni or popping a jalapeño hat on a Martini and calling it a Spicy Mart. Strange glassware, militant olives, and a £23 bill served with monk-like solemnity don’t really flame the orange peel anymore.
Focus is crucial. There’s a clear, identifiable culture at Line. Fermentation, fermentation, fermentation. It understands the concept and more importantly, how to execute it. You know what you are getting, in fact, you are going for it. The rest? Athens provides. Sunshine, great food, local identity, and alternatives aplenty to make the night even longer.
It’s a win that shows where the centre of gravity is shifting. Take Line’s approach to sustainability. Straddling a complicated wave between green washing and real purpose, sustainability is a bit of a groan-inducing word these days, but the truth is that if you’re going to do it, you need to shout about it. And show your workings. It can’t be a badge pinned to the back of the menu. It has to be part of the pleasure, the technique, the theatre. If you can’t actually taste the planet-saving, did it really happen?
Art in Katowice demonstrates how wide the great European bar scene stretches
Europe’s cocktail scene is not one thing
The really interesting thing about a regional list is when it throws up trends that might have slipped from under your nose. Walk down a street in the UK right now and ask random people where the best cocktails are. They’ll likely say the usual suspects: London, Paris, Barcelona, Milan.
Before anyone in a waistcoat faints into a coupe, they are all still here and packed with frighteningly competent people who can make a Martini colder than a Victorian father. Although Brexit has meant that some of the brightest and best are fleeing our increasingly sad little shores, London still has seven bars on the list, more than any other city. And the best bartender of all, it seems.
But amongst the old guard, unlikelier names add real buzz. The 16th bar on this list is in Tirana, Albania. At 50 is Dunlin from Innsbruck. Thessaloniki’s Gorilla is No.33. Katowice boasts the One To Watch award for Art. And Athens alone has The Bar in Front of the Bar at No.2, Barro Negro at No.13, Baba au Rum at No.14, and The Clumsies at No.30.
Athens feels like the live wire. That dominance seems to come from not being in the centre of the map, but at the edge, which is often where the good stuff happens. Hubs in which risk thrives.
Lists, damn lists, and statistics
This inaugural list will cause arguments, of course. That’s what lists are for really, aren’t they? The all-important engagement. Somebody will say their favourite was robbed. Sage beard rubbers will posit that rankings do not matter. A bartender somewhere will sigh, swig a warm Dr Pepper can in the kitchen, and update their awards page.
Cool. Arguments mean people care. I’d rather people are talking about the trade.
And if Europe’s 50 Best Bars is going to become a useful annual temperature check for the continent’s drinking culture, then the first edition starts with a clear reading: nobody gets a biscuit for simply shaking properly. The bars setting the pace are the ones that know what they are for.
The full list
See you in Athens
As for our complicated little corner of the world, we’ve known for a while I think that it’s more than grand hotels and serious stemware. But it’s still nice to be reminded what Europe is, and can be, at its best.
It’s Athens fermenting strange brilliance, Oslo’s discipline, Milan’s future gazing, Paris’ precision-meets-pub energy. It is London elbowing its way to the centre of every conversation, as always.
Mostly, it’s opportunity. Has there ever been this much creativity and class on the continent before? Only one way to find out. See you in Athens, via Tirana.
Other award winners
Roku Industry Icon Award: Salvatore Calabrese
Three Cents Best New Opening Award: Waltz, London
Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu Award: Panda & Sons, Edinburgh
Ketel One Sustainable Bar Award: De Vie, Paris
SevenRooms Best Bar Design Award: Hide, Budapest
Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award: Mirror Bar, Bratislava
Altos Bartenders’ Bartender Award: Giorgio Bargiani
