The case for another 50 Best List: The 50 Best Hotel Bars

When The 50 Best Bars 2026 was revealed here in Milano on 7 October, the city had its own headline: Moebius Milano at No. 2 and The Best Bar in Europe. Read further down the list, though, and another story appears. Only five of the fifty bars are inside five-star hotels. That raises a question worth asking out loud: should hotel bars get a ranking of their own? And if so, does the drinks world really have room for yet another list? Before getting to that, here is who runs the seven, and what makes each one work.

Connaught Bar, London (No. 8)

The highest-ranked hotel bar on the list remains the benchmark. Agostino Perrone has been Director of Mixology at The Connaught in Mayfair since 2008. His right hand, Pisa-born Giorgio Bargiani, joined in 2014 as a barback and rose to Assistant Director of Mixology; in June he won the Altos Bartenders' Bartender Award at the first Europe's 50 Best Bars. The concept has never needed reinventing: the martini trolley rolls to your table and each drink is finished with house essences such as bergamot, myrtle and cardamom. Brexit or not, the team is still largely Italian, and it still delivers the best hospitality in London.

Argo, Hong Kong (No. 25)

Since November 2025 Argo has been led by Lyon-born Beverage Manager Jonathan Gabbay. His Argo Exploration menu moves away from lab-driven drinks toward collaborations with Hong Kong makers, from a punch built with a historic local coffee and tea house to a garnish drawn by a Wan Chai tattoo artist. In July Argo was named Best International Hotel Bar at the Spirited Awards.

BKK Social Club, Bangkok (No. 30)

One of the big climbers this year, up 19 places. Philip Bischoff, Beverage Manager and Four Seasons' beverage ambassador for Asia-Pacific, came over from Manhattan in Singapore and opened the bar in December 2020. The room is pure Latin American glamour on the Chao Phraya, and the current menu pays tribute to the places, people and parties of Mexico City.

Mimi Kakushi, Dubai (No. 42)

At Four Seasons Resort Dubai at Jumeirah Beach, this Rikas Group restaurant-bar takes its name from a 1920s Osaka hairstyle and leans fully into the jazz-age theme. Bar Manager Manja Stankovic's menu draws on the films of silent-era star Sessue Hayakawa, with drinks presented on movie reels. The signature is the Kori Kakushi Martini: ume-infused gin and a touch of vermouth, bottled and frozen inside a block of ice, then carved out at the table. It holds on to its title as The Best Bar in the Middle East.

Virtù, Tokyo (No. 48)

Thirty-nine floors above Otemachi, Virtù is an Art Deco room built on a Paris-meets-Tokyo idea, pairing vintage French spirits and aperitifs with Japanese whisky and seasonal ingredients. Head Bartender Keith Motsi, from Leeds, opened Equis at Four Seasons Beijing and ran Charles H. in Seoul, where he was named Bartenders' Bartender at Asia's 50 Best Bars 2022. This year Virtù was also a top-four finalist for Best International Hotel Bar at the Spirited Awards.

One List Too Many?

Five out of fifty, four from one hotel group. It is no surprise that some in the trade are asking whether luxury hotel bars deserve their own ranking. The harder question is whether anyone wants another list at all.

The case for is easy to make. Hotel bars play a different game, with corporate budgets and PR machines behind them and long opening hours. A dedicated list could recognise the many excellent ones missing from The 50 Best Bars. A few notables that come to mind: Atrium Bar at Four Seasons Firenze, Wing Lei Bar at Wynn Palace Macau, the Bulgari Bars in Milano, Rome and Tokyo, Darkside at Rosewood Hong Kong, Botanicum Bar at Huus Quell Gonten, Bar Hemingway at the Ritz Paris, Artesian at The Langham, London, Dukes Bar in London, Origin Bar at Shangri-La Singapore, Maiga! Bar at TA'AKTANA in Labuan Bajo, Ambar at Mandapa in Ubud, The Hudson Rooms at Capella Hanoi, the Lobby Bar at EDITION Lake Como, The Portrait Bar at The Fifth Avenue Hotel NY, Punch Room at Tokyo EDITION Ginza, the Library Bar at Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, Lennon's at Rosewood Bangkok and Charles H. at Four Seasons Seoul. The format already exists elsewhere too: Tales of the Cocktail has its Best International Hotel Bar award, Forbes Travel Guide has its Star Bars, and 50 Best itself already ranks hotels with The World's 50 Best Hotels.

The case against is just as strong, and list fatigue is a big part of it. In a few years 50 Best has gone from one bar ranking to a world list, a 51 to 100 extension and three regional editions, each with its own sponsored awards. Every new list adds another ceremony, another round of voting and another set of titles, and each one dilutes the weight of the last. Then there is the principle: the list has always prided itself on putting grand hotel bars side by side with speakeasies and dive bars, and the Connaught's two years at No. 1 (2020 and 2021) prove hotel bars can win head-on. A separate ranking risks becoming a consolation prize, quietly pushing hotel bars out of the main conversation.

My feeling is that both can be true. The main list should stay open to everyone, and nobody needs a fourth regional edition. But a ranking that cuts across regions and looks only at hotels would answer a different question from the ones already being asked, and it would shine a light on a category that is producing some of the best hospitality in the world.