Best-of list · Deep Dive
The biggest bar trends of 2024 that serious drinkers need to know: from low-ABV cocktails and Japanese highballs to clarified cocktails and.
The short answer
7 ranked rooms follow. How we picked is at the end of this guide.
Every year, someone publishes a bar trends piece full of observations that were already true eighteen months earlier. We are not doing that. These are the bar trends of 2024 that our editors have tracked from their earliest appearances in serious bar programs — the ones that have moved from a handful of innovative menus into the mainstream, and the ones still early enough that finding them still feels like discovery. Ranked by how much they matter to you as a drinker.
The low-ABV cocktail is not new. Bartenders have been making excellent lower-alcohol drinks for years, but the trend in 2024 is the seriousness with which the best bars are treating these programs. This is not a wellness gesture — it is a genuine expansion of what a cocktail menu can be. Bars are building entire sections around fermented beverages, vermouths, amari, and fortified wines, with the same level of attention previously reserved for spirit-forward drinks.
How we picked
The common thread across these trends is ambition applied with rigour. Low-ABV programs, fermentation, clarification, and house production are all means to the same end: cocktails that could not be made in a bar without commitment to quality as a baseline, not a marketing claim. The trend-resistant bar visitor benefits from these developments even if they never order a low-ABV drink or ask what clarification technique was used.
The trend we are most bullish about for the next three years: fermentation. The number of serious bars incorporating fermented ingredients into their programmes is still small enough that finding one is an event. By 2026, the best examples will have produced a second generation of even more developed programmes. The bars doing this well today are worth visiting as early adopters while the discovery still feels like discovery.
James tracks bar trends the same way a serious reader tracks literary fiction — by reading everything, visiting constantly, and remaining sceptical of anything that travels as fast as a press release. He has been wrong about trends twice in ten years, which he considers an acceptable record.
Last reviewed 2026-03-20 · The editors recheck hours and closures against current local coverage.