The 20 Best Bars in Australia

Nothing in Australia does more with less. Caretaker's Cottage occupies a tiny bluestone cottage at 139–141 Little Lonsdale Street — the former caretaker's quarters for Wesley Church, dwarfed by CBD towers — and turns two humble drinks into an argument for the whole country. Rob Libecans, Ryan Noreiks and Matt Stirling opened it quietly in 2022, and by 2025 it had climbed to No. 19 on The World's 50 Best Bars, retaining its crown as Best Bar in Australasia, and taken Cocktail Bar of the Year at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards. The move is the boilermaker: a freezer-cold Martini poured from custom gin beside the best Guinness in the city. There are no bookings and no pretension — just a short list of three classics, three house creations and one Martini, served with the warmth of a friend's kitchen. What makes it the country's best is that it has stripped away the showiness that so many high-end cocktail bars lean on and replaced it with pure hospitality and two flawless drinks. It is the most complete expression of Australian bar culture right now, which is why it tops the list.

Maybe Sammy is Australia's great glamour bar, and its record is the most durable on this list: seven consecutive years on The World's 50 Best Bars, most recently at No. 42 in 2025. Tucked into The Rocks at 115 Harrington Street, the room is a full-blooded 1950s Vegas fantasy — pastel pink, curved green marble, gold lamps and swing at conversation volume — built by Stefano Catino, Vince Lombardo and creative director Andrea Gualdi, who opened it in late 2018. The drinks match the theatre without hiding behind it: the Sammy Sour is a modern classic, and the seasonal menu balances precise originals against faultless standards. Service is the real signature, all Italian-American showmanship and generosity. It ranks second because, while it no longer sits as high globally as it once did, no other Sydney bar combines this level of polish, consistency and sheer fun. For a first-timer wanting to understand why the world rates Australian bartending, this is the room.

The judges' verdict is hard to argue with: Old Mate's Place was named Bar of the Year at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards, the night's headline prize. Hidden on Level 4 of 199 Clarence Street in the CBD, it was opened in 2018 by childhood friends Andres and Gabrielle Walters and Daniel Noble, who set out to build not a gin bar or a rum bar but the best all-rounder in the city. The result is two rooms in one: an indoor speakeasy dressed as a grand old library — arched bookshelves, chandelier, candlelit leather booths — and a lush greenhouse rooftop terrace strung among the skyscrapers. The cocktails are inventive without being fussy, the crowd is unpretentious, and the hospitality is the kind that makes strangers regulars. It sits at No. 3 because it wins on the thing hardest to fake: night after night, it is simply one of the most enjoyable bars in Australia, and the industry's own vote confirms it.

Byrdi is the most intellectually ambitious bar in the country, and in 2025 it was the only Australian venue besides the top-50 pair to land on The World's 50 Best Bars extended 51–100 list. Luke Whearty and Aki Nishikura — the couple behind Singapore's acclaimed Operation Dagger — opened it in 2019, tucked improbably inside the Ella retail precinct on the corner of Elizabeth and La Trobe streets in the CBD. Seasonality and locality drive everything: the menu changes constantly, native botanicals star, and components are fermented, smoked, centrifuged or reconstituted over weeks before they reach a glass. The food, mostly cooked over fire, is good enough to be the reason you come. This is not a bar for someone chasing a familiar Negroni; it is for drinkers who want to taste ideas they have never tasted before. It ranks fourth because that originality is genuinely world-leading, even if the deliberately cerebral approach makes it less of an all-comers crowd-pleaser than the three above it.

Above Board is the purest classical cocktail experience in Australia, and it holds the 2025 Australian Bar Awards' Cocktail List of the Year. Hayden Lambert — formerly of Black Pearl — opened this hidden counter bar in Collingwood in 2016, reached via Chopper Lane and an unmarked door. Inside there are barely more than a dozen seats along a marble counter and, famously, no printed menu: you tell Lambert or his bartender what you are in the mood for and they build it in front of you from an encyclopaedic command of technique and a wall of bottles. It has appeared on The World's 50 Best Bars in past years, and its influence on Melbourne's cocktail culture is out of all proportion to its size. It ranks fifth because it does one thing — the perfectly made drink, delivered with quiet expertise — better than anywhere else, though its tiny size and bookings-first intimacy make it a specialist's pilgrimage rather than a casual drop-in.

Gimlet is the grand room on this list — a soaring, brass-and-arched-window dining bar on Russell Street from Andrew McConnell's Trader House group, and the winner of Restaurant Bar of the Year at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards. It plays a European classic-bar fantasy with total conviction: white-jacketed staff, a marble bar built for perching, martinis and gimlets executed to the millimetre, and a wine list with the depth of a serious restaurant. You can eat a full, excellent meal here, but the front bar is designed so you never have to — a seat, a martini and a dozen oysters is one of the best hours money buys in Melbourne. It ranks sixth because it operates at a level of polish and consistency few can touch, and because it proves the restaurant bar is a category Australia does as well as anywhere. What keeps it from the top five is simply that its excellence is more about flawless execution of a known idea than the boundary-pushing originality above it.

Cantina OK! is proof that size is no ceiling. Wedged into a former mechanic's garage barely bigger than a walk-in wardrobe at 1 Council Place — a service laneway off Clarence Street in the CBD — it seats almost nobody and turns away a queue most nights, yet it took Tequila Bar of the Year at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards. From the Mucho Group team behind Tio's Cervecería, it is a shrine to agave: one of the deepest tequila and mezcal collections in the country, drinks shaken to a soundtrack of soul and hip-hop, and no pretension whatsoever. There is no seating to speak of, no reservations, and no reason to be anywhere else once you have a Tommy's Margarita in hand. It ranks seventh because within its narrow specialism it is world-class and utterly distinctive, a bar that could exist in Mexico City or Los Angeles and hold its own. The trade-off for that intensity is a room so small that a visit depends as much on timing and luck as on intent.

When the industry votes for where its own people drink after a shift, it picks Ramblin' Rascal Tavern — winner of Best Bartenders' Bar at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards. Down a set of stairs into a basement at 60 Park Street in the CBD, it is deliberately, gloriously scruffy: walls plastered with wrestling posters and pin-ups, hardcore on the stereo, and a menu that swings from serious original cocktails to cold cans and a genuinely great burger. The point is that the drinks are made with real skill but served without an ounce of ceremony, which is exactly why bartenders love it. It has become a benchmark for the modern Sydney dive — irreverent on the surface, rigorous underneath. It ranks eighth because it nails a very hard balance: it is unpretentious enough to feel like a local and good enough to draw pilgrims, and few bars in the country are as purely fun after midnight. Polish is not the pitch here, and that is entirely the point.

Australia's best hotel bar for 2025 sits twenty-two floors above the CBD at the Kimpton Margot Sydney, and it took Hotel Bar of the Year at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards. Dean & Nancy is a glamorous, art-deco-inflected room with wraparound views across the city skyline and a terrace that makes the whole thing feel like a scene from another era. The cocktail programme is thematic and thoughtful — a menu structured around characters and stories rather than a bare spirit-by-spirit list — and the execution matches the setting. Hotel bars are a notoriously tough category to win, because they must serve everyone from a jet-lagged guest to a local marking an occasion, and Dean & Nancy does it with rare confidence. It ranks ninth as the standout in its class: a destination bar that happens to sit inside a hotel, rather than a hotel amenity that happens to serve drinks. The view and the glamour do a lot of the work, but the drinks earn their place alongside them.

Bar Planet reimagines the world's most divisive drink — the Martini — as the centrepiece of a psychedelic inner-west dive, and it took Gin Bar of the Year at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards. On Enmore Road in Newtown, from the same crew behind Cantina OK! and Tio's, it is a groovy, colourful, low-lit room where the house move is a precise, ice-cold Martini served without ceremony to a soundtrack that leans loud and fun. It manages the neat trick of being both a serious drinks bar and a genuine neighbourhood hang, the kind of place you can settle into for one and stay for four. It ranks tenth because it takes a single classic and builds an entire, distinctive personality around it — an approachable counterpoint to the CBD's more polished cocktail rooms. What keeps it out of the top tier is scope: it is a specialist that does its one thing brilliantly rather than a bar trying to be everything, but as a Martini destination it has few equals in the country.

Australia's pub culture is one of its great gifts to the drinking world, and in 2025 the Australian Bar Awards named The Waratah in Sydney its Pub of the Year. It represents the modern renovation of the Aussie pub done right — a room that keeps the easy, all-welcome warmth of a corner local while quietly lifting the beer selection, the wine list and the food to a standard that would embarrass many dedicated bars. The best of this new-wave pub keeps prices fair and the door open to everyone, then rewards anyone paying attention with genuinely considered drinks. It ranks eleventh because the pub is the backbone of how Australians actually drink, and a list of the country's best bars that ignored the category would be dishonest. The Waratah is the current benchmark: unpretentious, generous and reliably excellent. It sits here rather than higher because its ambitions are broad-based and comfortable by design, where the bars above chase a narrower kind of world-beating excellence.

Goodwater took Small Bar of the Year at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards, and it earns its place as a reminder that some of Melbourne's best drinking happens in the smallest rooms. The city's licensing history made intimate, tucked-away bars a defining feature of its scene, and Goodwater is the current standard-bearer: a tightly run space where the limited footprint forces a focus on doing a short list of things impeccably. The drinks are precise, the service is close and personal in the way only a small room allows, and there is none of the noise or scale that can flatten a big venue's edges. It ranks twelfth because it distils — literally and figuratively — what makes Melbourne special: the belief that a bar does not need to be large or loud to be great. What holds it back from the upper reaches of the list is reach rather than quality; it is a jewel-box bar by design, and its excellence is felt by the handful who fit inside rather than broadcast across a city.

Brisbane's bar scene has matured fast, and Savile Row is its most decorated room — winner of Whisky Bar of the Year at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards. Hidden down Winn Lane in Fortitude Valley, it is a dark, tailored, low-lit den built around one of the deepest brown-spirits collections in the country: shelves of Scotch, bourbon, rye, Japanese and Australian whisky that reward a slow evening and a curious palate. The cocktails are spirit-forward and seriously made, but the pleasure here is conversation with a bartender who can steer you through the back bar to something you would never have found alone. It ranks thirteenth as the best of Brisbane and a genuine national contender in its specialism, proof that the whisky-bar tradition is alive well beyond Sydney and Melbourne. It sits mid-list only because it is a focused, category-specific room rather than an all-rounder — but for anyone who loves brown spirits, it is worth a trip to Queensland on its own.

Milquetoast gives Brisbane a second entry and took Wine Bar of the Year at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards — a sign of how quickly Queensland's drinking culture has grown up. The modern Australian wine bar is one of the most exciting formats in the country: low-intervention and classic bottles side by side, a by-the-glass list with real range, and food built to match rather than fill. Milquetoast does it with the easy confidence of a room that knows exactly what it is, pouring thoughtfully and pitching itself as a neighbourhood destination rather than a special-occasion splurge. It ranks fourteenth because the wine bar has become central to how Australians drink out, and this is the reigning best of its kind — approachable, well-curated and quietly excellent. What keeps it here rather than higher is category and reach: it is a specialist wine room, not a cocktail powerhouse or a national landmark, but within its lane it sets the standard, and it cements Brisbane as a city worth building a night around.

From the team behind No. 3's Old Mate's Place comes Old Loves, a basement rum bar in the Sydney CBD that won Rum Bar of the Year at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards. Where its older sibling is all library grandeur and rooftop greenery, Old Loves goes underground and warm — a moody, low-ceilinged room built around one of Sydney's most serious rum and cachaça collections, from funky Jamaican pot stills to soft aged sippers. The cocktails lean tropical without tipping into kitsch, and the same instinct for generous, unpretentious hospitality that made Old Mate's Place a winner runs through here too. It ranks fifteenth as a standout specialist and a smart piece of bar-building: proof that a great team can open a second room with a completely different personality and still win its category outright. It sits mid-list because rum is a narrow focus and the space is deliberately intimate, but for anyone who loves the spirit, it is the best dedicated address in the country right now.

Perth is too often left out of the national conversation, and Bar Love is the strongest argument against that. At 195 Brisbane Street in Northbridge, it won Bar Team of the Year at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards — a category that rewards not a single star but the collective strength and hospitality of a whole floor. That is telling: Bar Love is a warm, energetic room where the drinks are inventive and well made, but the real draw is the people pouring them and the sense that everyone in the building is genuinely pleased you came. It ranks sixteenth as the best of Western Australia and a reminder that world-class hospitality is not a two-city monopoly. What keeps it mid-list is exposure rather than merit — it operates far from the eastern-seaboard spotlight — but on the measure that matters most in a bar, the feeling of being well looked after, it beats venues ranked above it. For anyone drinking in Perth, it is the first booking to make.

South Australia earns its place through Never Never Distilling Co, whose cellar-door bar in McLaren Vale won Best Distillery Bar at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards. Never Never has built a national reputation for its heavily juniper-forward gins, and the distillery bar is where that reputation becomes an experience: drinks poured metres from the still that made them, a Southside or a Martini built on gin at its freshest, surrounded by the vineyards of one of Australia's great wine regions. The distillery-bar format is a distinctly Australian pleasure — part production site, part destination drinking — and Never Never does it better than anyone. It ranks seventeenth as the best of its kind and the entry that stretches this list beyond the capital cities into the country that actually grows and distils much of what the others pour. It sits here because it is a regional day-trip rather than a city-night institution, but as a reason to build a trip around a single bar, few places in the country are more rewarding.

Fortunate Son earns its spot through people, not just product: its Dylan Howarth was named Host of the Year at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards, an honour that recognises the single most underrated skill in hospitality — making a room feel like yours the moment you walk in. The bar itself, in Sydney's inner west, is a relaxed, characterful neighbourhood spot with well-made drinks and an easy, unforced energy, but what elevates it is the front-of-house craft that a Host of the Year award certifies. In a list that necessarily leans on drinks programmes and specialist collections, Fortunate Son is a reminder that the warmth of the welcome is often what actually makes a night. It ranks eighteenth because that hospitality is genuinely best-in-class even where the bar's broader profile is more modest than the marquee names above. For a drinker who values feeling looked after over chasing a trophy drinks list, it is one of the most quietly rewarding rooms in the city.

Australians increasingly judge a bar by its kitchen, and Bar Bellamy in Melbourne won Best Bar Food at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards. The category matters more than it sounds: the line between bar and restaurant has blurred to the point where the best rooms treat food as a headline act rather than an afterthought, and Bellamy does exactly that — a menu built to be eaten properly alongside the drinks, with the care and seasoning of a serious kitchen rather than the reheated snacks that pad out many drinks lists. The result is a bar you can happily make a whole evening of, moving from an aperitivo to a full graze without ever needing a restaurant reservation. It ranks nineteenth as the best expression of that food-forward model, a genuinely delicious room that rewards lingering. It sits near the foot of the list only because its distinction is in the kitchen rather than a landmark drinks programme — but as a place to actually spend a night eating and drinking well, it more than earns its spot.

The final place goes to the future: Pendant Public Bar in Melbourne was named New Bar of the Year at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards, the prize that most reliably flags who will be climbing lists like this one for years to come. New Bar of the Year winners have a habit of maturing into national institutions, and Pendant arrives with the confidence of a room that already knows what it wants to be — a well-designed, well-run public bar pitched as an everyday destination rather than a special occasion. It ranks twentieth not because it is the twentieth-best bar in the country on a decade of evidence, but because it is the most exciting newcomer, and a national ranking should always keep a seat for the room about to break through. Watch this space: on the trajectory of past winners, Pendant is the name most likely to be several positions higher when we revisit this list next year. For now, it is the essential first stop on any tour of what's next in Melbourne.