Athens bar Line named best in Europe as inaugural Europe’s 50 Best Bars list announced

Line, a bar in the Kato Petralona district of Athens, has been named the best bar in Europe in the inaugural edition of Europe’s 50 Best Bars, it was announced yesterday at the live awards ceremony in Amsterdam. The list, sponsored by Perrier and organised by William Reed (the company behind The World’s 50 Best Bars), ranks venues across the continent based on votes from more than 300 industry experts.

The 2026 list features entries from 22 cities, including Athens, Barcelona, Bratislava, London, Madrid and Rome. Line, which also took the title of the Best Bar in Greece, was followed by fellow Athens venue The Bar in Front of the Bar at number two. Barcelona’s Sips ranked third, with Oslo’s Himkok at number four and Paris’s Bar Nouveau completing the top five.

London recorded the strongest showing of any city, with seven bars on the list. The Connaught Bar was the highest-placed at number ten, and the city was named the best in the UK. Meanwhile, Athens featured five venues, with six entries from Barcelona, four from Paris and a total of nine Italian bars.

Placed eighth in The World’s 50 Best Bars 2025, Line is housed in a former art gallery. It was created by bartenders Vasilis Kyritsis and Nikos Bakoulis and operates on a circular model, producing fruit wines, beers and sourdough on site and reworking byproducts into cocktails and food. Their menu centres on house-made fruit wines known as Why-ins, developed with winemaker Thanos Georgilas, alongside small plates from chef Pavlos Kyriaki. The venue functions as a daytime coffee and wine spot before shifting to a cocktail destination in the evening. 50 Best’s Faye Huggett explained, “Their remarkable hospitality and stunning creativity have not only earned them this accolade but have truly cemented Athens’s position on the global map”.

Several special awards were also presented. Salvatore Calabrese received the Roku Industry Icon Award for a career spanning more than five decades, while London’s recently launched Waltz, ranked at number 23, took the Three Cents Best New Opening Award. Edinburgh’s Panda & Sons won the Best Cocktail Menu Award, Paris’s De Vie was recognised for sustainability, and Hide in Budapest received the Best Bar Design Award. Mirror Bar in Bratislava was given the Art of Hospitality Award, and Giorgio Bargiani was named Bartenders’ Bartender.

The overall ranking is based on the votes of more than 300 anonymous, gender-balanced industry experts across Europe, who nominate the establishments where they enjoyed their best experiences over the preceding 18 months. Bars cannot apply to appear on the list, and sponsors have no influence over its composition.

Huggett concluded by saying: “We hope that this inaugural list of Europe’s 50 Best Bars will shine a bright spotlight onto an even greater number of outstanding bars across this vibrant continent and inspire epicures around the world to explore everything it has to offer – from long-established cocktail capitals to fresh, emerging scenes that are pushing boundaries in new and exciting ways.”

Food Desk

For further information about Europe’s 50 Best Bars and the full rankings, visit the organisation’s website here.