Best-of list · Industry Guide
Bar awards shape which bars get attention and which get overlooked. We break down how bar awards work, who votes, and which ones actually matter for.
The short answer
8 ranked rooms follow. How we picked is at the end of this guide.
Bar awards are the most visible currency in the cocktail world, and they are also the most misunderstood. When a bar is named the World's Best or wins a Spirited Award at Tales of the Cocktail, that recognition lands differently depending on how the award works, who votes for it, and whether the voting process is genuinely independent. We have been following bar awards for long enough to have a clear view of which ones carry real weight and which are primarily marketing vehicles. For a comprehensive look at every major awards programme and what winning each one actually means for a bar's trajectory, read our complete guide to bar of the year awards.
The World's 50 Best Bars, produced by William Reed Business Media, uses an Academy of roughly 700 industry professionals worldwide who each submit a ranked list of their personal recommendations. Voters cannot vote for bars in their own country or for bars with which they have a commercial relationship. The result is not perfect — voters are human, they have networks, they have biases — but the structural independence of the vote is real. A bar cannot buy its way onto the 50 Best list in the way it can buy placement in a magazine feature.
The Spirited Awards, run by Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans, uses a combination of public voting and industry judging panels depending on the category. The public vote categories are more susceptible to organised campaigns by bars with large social followings. The judged categories carry more weight. Tales of the Cocktail is also sponsored by spirit brands, which creates structural complexity in some of the spirit-specific awards, though the bar-focused categories remain credible.
How we picked
The most useful way to engage with bar awards is as a discovery tool rather than a definitive ranking. The World's 50 Best list tells you which bars have strong enough reputations in the international industry to earn peer recognition — that is valuable information, even if the precise ranking is debatable. The Spirited Awards shortlists identify bartenders who are highly regarded by their peers — visiting their bars is worthwhile even if they did not win. The James Beard bar award identifies sustained programme quality rather than annual popularity.
Use the awards to find bars you have not tried. Then visit them with your own criteria. The award will have got you through the door. What happens after that is between you and whoever is behind the bar.
James has been tracking bar awards and the industry politics behind them since 2011. He writes about bar culture and the drinks industry for several publications and has a strong opinion about which awards actually mean something.
Last reviewed 2026-04-29 · The editors recheck hours and closures against current local coverage.