Editorial
Two categories define how a city drinks: the cocktail bar and the craft beer bar. Across 176 cities they are not close. We track 1,104 cocktail bars and 391 craft beer bars, a 2.8 to 1 lead for the shaker over the tap.
The lead holds almost everywhere. Of the cities with a meaningful presence in both categories, only Krakow tips craft beer over cocktails, eight to six. That is the single exception in the dataset.
At the other end, several cities barely tap a keg. Athens tracks 20 cocktail bars and zero in the craft beer category. Bali and Marrakech show the same shape, cocktail rooms with no craft beer presence at all.
London is the clearest case. It carries 31 cocktail bars against five craft beer rooms, a six to one tilt, even though Britain has a deep beer tradition. The cocktail bar simply scales better in a high rent global city, a point that fits the wider 2026 category data.
The pattern is regional. Northern and central Europe and craft minded North American cities lean closest to beer: Brussels, Krakow, Reykjavik, Edinburgh, Copenhagen, Philadelphia, Nashville and Montreal all cluster near parity. Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cities lean hard to cocktails.
That tracks drinking culture more than economics. Belgium and Czechia built their bar identity on beer, so Brussels and Krakow keep a tap led scene. Greece and the United Arab Emirates did not, so Athens and Dubai read as cocktail towns in the data.
"Krakow is the only city in 72 where craft beer outnumbers the cocktail bar. Everywhere else, the shaker wins."
If you plan a trip around what you drink, the ratio is a fast filter. For a beer led weekend, Brussels and Krakow reward you, and our 25 best craft beer bars in Europe maps the best of them. For a cocktail trip, Athens, Zurich and London run the deepest benches, covered in our 25 best cocktail bars in Europe.
You can also read the split by category page: the craft beer index and the cocktail bar index show the same divide city by city. For how Berlin balances both, see our Amsterdam versus Berlin bars comparison.
Dataset. barsforkings.com master index, bars-master-72-cities.csv. Sample size 3,631 bars across 176 cities. Fields used: city, category. Pulled June 2026.
Method. For each city we counted bars in the craft-beer and cocktail-bars categories and computed the craft-to-cocktail ratio. To avoid noise, the city tables include only cities with at least six bars across the two categories combined. Totals are full-index counts.
External sources. None required. Every figure on this page is a direct count from the dataset. National drinking-culture context is general background, not a sourced statistic.
James Harlow writes about beer and spirits culture for barsforKings. He has judged craft beer competitions on three continents and still orders a Negroni when it counts.
Cocktail bars dominate. Across our 72-city index there are 1,104 cocktail bars and 391 craft beer bars, a ratio of 2.8 to 1 in favor of cocktails.
Krakow is the only city in the index where craft beer bars outnumber cocktail bars, eight to six. Brussels is nearly level at ten to nine. Both reflect strong national beer cultures.
Athens leads, with 20 cocktail bars and zero in the craft beer category. Dubai, Zurich and Osaka also lean heavily to cocktails. London runs 31 cocktail bars to just five craft beer rooms.
No. Culture decides it more than size. Beer-tradition cities like Brussels and Krakow stay tap-led, while Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cities such as Athens and Dubai read as cocktail towns regardless of size.
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