Asia’s 50 Best Bars looks nothing like it did in 2016

Welcome back to Boothby’s Singapore briefing, where this week I’m looking at some of the trends underpinning this week’s announcement of Asia’s 50 Best Bars. Because there are a bunch of data visualisations and tables, you could read it in your inbox, but it is better viewed on the web here.

In this briefing:

• Once the dominant city, Singapore is having a tough time on Asia’s 50 Best Bars list;
• the average length of time a bar stays on the list;
• does the list prefer new bars or old bars?
• which bar has performed best on the list over time?

Now first of all, a disclaimer. I am an academy chair for The World’s 50 Best Bars, but I don’t have any insight into how the voters are compiled for Asia’s 50 Best Bars, and I’m not writing as a representative for 50 Best or its parent company, William Reed. I haven’t got any secret knowledge on how this list was pulled together — I’m just looking at the rankings.

And a quick note as to how we’ve pulled this information together: we’ve used Claude to collate and input the data from each list since 2016 from sources available on the web, and have used Claude to interrogate that data. But nothing in this piece has been written by Claude or by AI more broadly, nor will we ever use those tools to write stories. Have I used it to code some visualisations we have used here? You bet.

First, I want to note that so much discussion in the bar world — whether it is on social media, the consumer press, in trade media like us, or in bars themselves — centres around these big lists and awards more generally. What I will say, as a journalist and bars writer, is that I think these big lists are interesting indicators of the times we live in. They are a snapshot of educated bar world opinion aggregated at a moment in time. They are also moments of celebration and recognition for the hard work that bartenders and bar owners put in. They are also not everything — as Daniel Waddy from Satan’s Whiskers once told me, a great bar is a bar that makes money. If you have happy guests, a full house, and great bartenders, that is a thing of beauty.

Having said that, let’s now talk about the list a lot. Let’s get into some analysis of the list and some takeaways — the first one is the big one.

Singapore has had a dramatic drop in listings across the last two years.

2026 represents the 11th year of the Asia’s 50 Best Bars format, and at every event during that time — except for this year — a bar from Singapore or Hong Kong has claimed the number one spot.

You’ll see that in the early years of the list, Singapore was home to the number one bar in four years from five, with the last Singapore number one coming in 2020. Since then, from 2021 to 2025, Hong Kong has been home to the number one bar in Asia.

That changed this year, with Hope & Sesame — whom you may have read about in this story I wrote about co-founder Andrew Ho — from Guangzhou in China that claimed the number one spot.

More on Hope & Sesame’s win in a moment.

Number ones aside, Singapore’s overall representation on the list had a drastic fall across the last two instalments.

Number of bars on the list per city 2016-2026

From the beginning of the Asia’s 50 Best Bars list in 2016, to 2024, Singapore dominated placings on the list, reliably picking up between nine and 13 spots on the list, more than any other city except for Hong Kong in 2016, where they both picked up nine.

Contrast that with the results from the last two years, in which Singapore bars accounted for just five spots in 2025, and four in 2026.

Singapore bars on the list: Jigger & Pony (9), Nutmeg & Clove (12), Offtrack (16), Origin Bar (43).

As I mentioned up top, I don’t have any special insight into how the vote is conducted, but I suspect Singapore’s relative weight on the list is a result of a broadening of the voter base for Asia. Again, I don’t know if that’s true, but it would be supported by the increased representations of bars from other countries throughout Asia on the list.

This year the city with the most listings is Bangkok, with eight bars from the thriving bar destination picking up spots this year (and the best result for Bangkok bars ever). The previous highest for Bangkok was seven, which they picked up in 2019 and 2025.

Bangkok bars on the list: Dry Wave Cocktail Studio (4), Bar Us (6), Lennon’s (7), Bar Sathorn (17), BKK Social Club (20), Opium (25), G.O.D. (31), Aqua Bar (48).

Hong Kong has the second-most bars on the list in 2026 with seven entries in 2026, up one from last year. (It’s worth noting, too, that in 2025 Hong Kong scored its lowest number of bars ever, with just six on the list.)

Hong Kong bars on the list: Bar Leone (3), Gokan (22), Coa (24), Mius (36), Argo (37), Montana (47), Penicillin (49).

Jakarta picked up four places on the list in 2026. Modernhaus (11), Cosmo Pony (15), Carrots Bar (21), The Golden Tooth (40).

It’s worth noting that Tokyo has had its poorest result in 2026, with just three bars scoring spots.

Tokyo bars on the list: Punch Room Tokyo (23), Virtù (26), Bar Libre (39).

The 2026 list features more cities than ever before

Whatever one thinks about lists like Asia’s 50 Best Bars, you have to say that the list is recognising more cities than it has before.

2026 saw some 22 cities represented among the 50 best bars in Asia, which is nearly double the number of cities on the list at its start in 2016 (with 12 cities represented). Between 2016 and 2021, the number of cities on the list hovered between 11 (in 2019) and 15 (a high point in 2018). Since 2022, however, the number of cities represented has gradually increased: 16 in 2022, 17 in 2023, 18 in 2024, 20 in 2025.

The interesting note about Hope & Sesame’s win

Out of some 180 bars to have ever made it onto Asia’s 50 Best list proper (not the extended 51-100 list), one third of those bars have made just one appearance before coming off the list. The average time that a bar spends on the list is 3.1 years.

Churn per edition (new entries and re-entries each year)

There were 14 new entries and two re-entries to the list this year; that means some 32 percent of the list turned over in 2026. There definitely seems to be an emphasis on new faces landing on the list.

Let’s look at the question of whether the list favours new bars or older bars.

The oldest bar on the list in 2026 is Bangkok’s Aqua Bar (20 years old). This contrasts to a few years back when The Bamboo Bar at the Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok was on the list, which in 2022 was 69 years old. The older bars on the list — the 16 percent of bars are 10 years or older — are not as old as they used to be.

The average age of a bar on the list is 5.5 years old (with the median age being five); 40 percent of bars on the list are three years old and younger.

The interesting note about Hope & Sesame’s number one placing in 2026 is that it is the oldest bar — 10 years old — to score a number one placing. The outlier at the other end of the scale was Bar Leone in 2024, when it scored the number one spot at just one year old.

Every other instalment of Asia’s 50 Best Bars was topped by a bar that was between two and eight years old.

The bar with the best performance on the list over time

Which bar has ranked higher and more consistently over the 11 editions of the Asia’s 50 best Bars list? That bar is none other than Singapore legend, Jigger & Pony, which is one of two bars to have placed on the list for 11 successive years, and claimed the number one spot in 2020. The other bar that is an evergreen fixture on the list is Alice, in Seoul, with its highest placing being 11 in 2016.

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