It’s official: four London bars are the best in the world

Every year World’s 50 Best Bars reveals its esteemed ranking of the finest drinkeries on the planet, and every year London – a city home to countless exquisite bars – gets repped in the list. And this year’s ranking is no different.

Yesterday (October 22), World’s 50 Best Bars announced its list for 2024 at a ceremony in Madrid. This year no less than four London bars made the cut, which is one fewer than last year but still mightily impressive.

Placing highest from London this year was Tayēr + Elementary in fourth – several notches up from its eighth-place finish last year. The Old Street bar is a regular in these sorts of global bar rankings (a Time Out review gave Tayēr + Elementary a full five stars), and at World’s 50 Best Bars 2024 T+E founder Monica Berg was also given a Roku Industry Icon Award.

Photograph: Tāyer + Elementary

Next highest from London was Connaught Bar in 13th, which has slipped down the ranking from eighth in 2023, while a little further down the top 50 was Satan’s Whiskers at 29th (down from 28th last year). The fourth London bar was Scarfes Bar at 37.

All of which means that London remains the ‘cocktail capital of Europe’ with the continent’s highest number of high-flying bars. Not in the top 50 but still winning an award was London’s Lyaness, which scooped up the Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu Award. Here at Time Out we recently covered Lyaness being awarded three ‘pins’ in the new Pinnacle Guide for bars – making it the only bar in the world to have achieved such an accolade.

The London bar that slipped out of this year’s World’s 50 Best Bars was A Bar With Shapes For a Name (which recently opened a second ‘Warehaus’ site). Only one other UK bar made the cut – you can read all about that one here.

Coming first in this year’s list was Mexico City’s Handshake Speakeasy, marking the first time a Mexican bar has topped this prestigious list. You can find the full 2024 World’s 50 Best Bars list here.

Drinking in London with Time Out

Planning your next tipple? Time Out has you covered. To get you started, check out our list of London’s best bars, it’s most spectacular cocktail bars and finest pubs. And did you see that one London pub is competing to be named the best in the UK?

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