For one week Milan was the capital of the bar world. Cointreau used the occasion to ask the people behind the best counters what they order themselves. The answer is a classic.
When the bar world meets, it is officially about rankings and really about something else: who drinks what, who mixes with whom, which ingredient suddenly turns up everywhere? At The 50 Best Bars 2026 in Milan, Cointreau was back as Official Orange Liqueur Partner and asked exactly these questions. The house from Angers talked to some of the world’s most influential bartenders about the drinks, ingredients and destinations shaping the industry right now.
The new ranking
The top of the 2026 list goes to Asia. Bar Leone in Hong Kong is number one, ahead of Moebius Milano, which took second place in front of a home crowd, and Alquimico in Cartagena, Colombia. They are followed by Bar Us in Bangkok, Line in Athens, Handshake Speakeasy in Mexico City, Zest in Seoul, the Connaught Bar in London, Lady Bee in Lima and Bar Maura in Mexico City. The votes come from an academy of more than 800 experts worldwide, and the list has been published every year since 2009.
One award concerns an address you will also find with us: the Rémy Martin Legend of the List Award went to Paradiso in Barcelona, the speakeasy behind the fridge door in El Born.
Margarita and pandan
The conversations behind the scenes produced a clear favourite. Several of the leading bartenders named the Margarita both as their own cocktail of choice and as the drink they would order to mark a special occasion. For a brand that is one of the basic ingredients of this classic, that is a fine result. Our Margarita recipe, by the way, names Cointreau as the orange liqueur.
Among the ingredients, pandan got people talking most. The fragrant Southeast Asian plant brings notes of vanilla, coconut and toasted grass to the glass and stands for a growing appetite for bold, globally inspired flavours.
A city full of guest shifts
The celebrations were not confined to the stage. Many of the world’s most exciting bars took over counters all over Milan that week. To launch Cointreau Spicy, the brand teamed up with Lubna, the sister bar of Moebius, where three acclaimed Paris bars, Danico, Bar Nouveau and De Vie, worked guest shifts behind the bar. Moebius itself was number seven on the 2025 list.
Cointreau also brought London’s Lyaness together with Milan’s Mag Café and the non-alcoholic aperitif brand JNPR for a brunch takeover. It was about lower-ABV cocktails and new ways to drink together, a theme we also cover in our cocktail trends 2026. Collaborations with leading bars from Dubai and Scotland turned Milan into a meeting point for influences from around the world.
Red scarves and new drinks
At the awards ceremony itself, Cointreau once again sponsored the red scarf ceremony that honours the bars on the list. The colour echoes the red ribbon that has been on every bottle of Cointreau since 1849. In the glass were Cointreau L’Unique and the new Cointreau Spicy. Among other serves, the Lyaness team created an Orange Spritz that shows the orange in all its facets and a Spiced Carrot Margarita combining citrus, warming spice and savoury notes.
“The 50 Best Bars brings together the people setting the pace for cocktail culture around the world,” says Clémence Gallet, Executive Brand Director at Cointreau. For her the week is one of the most exciting moments in the hospitality calendar, and Milan showed how much talent and energy there is in the global bar community.
The house behind the bottle
Cointreau was founded in Angers in 1849 and today goes into more than 500 cocktails, among them the Margarita and the Cosmopolitan. The liqueur is made from carefully selected and distilled sweet and bitter orange peels, overseen by Master Distiller Carole Quinton. In 2026 the house also introduced a new brand platform: Shake it Up treats cocktail making as a creative and social ritual.
Our advice
If you want to experience the list rather than just read it, you do not have to fly to Hong Kong. In Barcelona, Paradiso, the world’s best bar of 2022, is waiting, and our piece on speakeasy culture explains how to get in. Go ahead and order a Margarita there: according to the world’s best bartenders, you cannot go wrong.
