City guide

Reykjavik Bar Guide

Reykjavik drinks late. Icelanders generally do not start drinking until 10pm or 11pm, the bars run until 4am or 5am, and the scene compresses into a small downtown that you can walk in twenty minutes. There is no metro. The whole drinking city is a fifteen minute radius.

The Top 50 in Reykjavik 50 bars

How this guide was made

Every bar in this guide was visited in person by a barsforKings editor. No bar is listed without a visit within the past 18 months, and every ranked bar is visited at least twice, on different nights, before it earns a place. This city is re-reviewed every 90 days, and each entry is approved by a named editor — never an algorithm and never a paid placement. Read our full methodology and editorial standards, or meet the editors behind the reviews.

Independent editorial — 9,000+ bars across 176 cities, rigorously tested.

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Weekly picks

The bars worth going to, weekly.