How the World's 50 Best Bars Are Judged

The Academy: Who Actually Votes

The World's 50 Best Bars is decided by an academy of approximately 680 voters, divided across 7 geographic regions. Each voter casts ballots for 7 bars from personal experience within the past 18 months, ranking them in order of preference. The full list of academy members is not published, though their regional distribution is disclosed. At least 3 of a voter's 7 choices must be outside their home region, which is designed to prevent purely domestic voting.

Academy members are drawn from the bar industry: working bartenders, bar managers, bar directors, drinks writers, and industry professionals. They are recruited by regional chairs and the central organization, and membership rotates over time. The system is subject to the same networking bias inherent in any peer-voted recognition: people vote for bars they know, and they tend to know the bars in their own networks. This is not a flaw unique to 50 Best; it is a structural reality of all such systems.

What the Votes Are Supposed to Measure

The 50 Best organization provides guidance to voters, suggesting they consider the overall experience: drink quality, cocktail menu originality, service, atmosphere, and the bar's contribution to its local and global industry. There is no formal scoring rubric, and voters are not required to document their reasoning. The result is a weighted average of subjective professional opinions, which produces a different kind of signal than either objective criteria (speed, accuracy) or a judged panel.

The "overall experience" framing explains why some technically excellent bars with minimal atmosphere never appear on the list, while some bars with less technically demanding menus achieve high placements through exceptional service and distinctive environments. A bar in London that creates a memorable atmosphere and consistent excellence across 50 covers a night will outperform a technically superior bar in a less stimulating environment, because the voters are recording what they remember, not what they measured.

Bars that top the list consistently — Attaboy in New York, Connaught Bar in London, Paradiso in Barcelona — tend to be exceptional across every dimension simultaneously. The most frequently cited common trait among bars that hold top-10 positions for multiple years is consistency, specifically the ability to deliver the same quality of drink and service across different staff, different nights, and different service volumes.

The Geographic Concentration Problem

Critics of the list have consistently noted that it overweights certain cities and underweights others. London, New York, Barcelona, and Singapore together account for a disproportionate share of top-50 placements relative to their global footprint. This partly reflects genuine quality concentration in these cities, which have the economic and talent conditions to support exceptional bars. It also reflects the fact that more academy voters visit, work in, or know people in these cities.

Cities like Mexico City, Cape Town, and Buenos Aires have bar scenes that industry professionals who have visited them consistently describe as world-class, but they appear rarely or not at all in the top 50. The required cross-regional voting helps somewhat but does not fully correct for the structural advantage of being in a city where academy members naturally congregate.

The organization has responded to these critiques over the years by adjusting regional allocations and actively recruiting voters from underrepresented markets. The list has become modestly more geographically diverse since 2015, which is measurable progress even if the underlying geography remains skewed toward a small number of cities with very high concentrations of industry professionals.

What Getting on the List Actually Does

A bar that enters the list for the first time, particularly in the top 25, can expect a significant and lasting change in its business profile. Bookings from international visitors increase immediately. Editorial coverage follows. The bar's team becomes more sought after for guest shifts, consultancies, and industry appearances. Bartenders from the venue get approached for senior roles elsewhere. The list functions as a career accelerator for everyone working at a placed bar, not just the owner or head bartender.

For drinkers in cities where a local bar appears on the list, the practical effect is that your neighborhood bar is now competing for reservations with international visitors who planned their trip around visiting the venue. Several bars that appeared in the top 10 moved to a reservations-only model within 12 months of their entry. The list also creates the demand for the same kind of exceptional bar culture in other cities. Travelers who visit New York's cocktail bars or London's best cocktail bars return to their home cities with raised expectations, and local bars respond to that.

For a fuller picture of how the industry recognizes and rewards its best operators, read our companion piece on how Michelin star bars work and our guide to the best bartender competitions worldwide. Together they cover the three major recognition systems that shape how the bar industry defines and rewards quality in its most ambitious venues.