The chance to have your bar named the best designed in the world is here! Here’s everything you need to know about the entry criteria, the judges and previous award winners.
After two years of scouring the globe for the most impressively and smartly designed drinking dens, the official Best Bar Design Award returns for 2025 as 50 Best once again invites bars to submit their venues for consideration from today.
Any style of bar is eligible to apply across the world, and bars do not need to have any prior affiliation the 50 Best rankings or 50 Best Discovery to enter. Entries will close on Monday 17 February and the global winner will be announced at The World’s 50 Best Bars 2025 ceremony, preceded by the regional winners being named at North America’s 50 Best Bars 2025 and Asia’s 50 Best Bars 2025.
The Best Bar Design Award 2025 closed for submissions on Monday 17 February at 09:00 (UTC).
Form and function
The Best Bar Design Award was created to celebrate and reward bars for thoughtful design that transcends style and taste to hit key touchpoints of accessibility, sustainability and appropriateness for their markets.
Himkok in Oslo was named the global winner of the 2024 award
The crown was taken by Himkok at The World’s 50 Best Bars 2024 for its sympathetic and sustainable reimaging of the bar’s 200-year-old space.
When designing the space, owner Erk Potur and the Himkok team had to be extra careful as the building is protected. Their carefully cognisant approach can be seen in everything, from the back bar stocked with rows and rows of matching bottles created by Olssøn Barbieri design studio to the choice of materials, which include eco polymer cork, untreated beech wood engravings, paper seals and organic ink.
In North America, top spot was taken by Chicago’s Avondale Bowl. The inaugural winner for North America’s 50 Best Bars 2024 did not, in fact, start its life as a bar at all, but rather as a classic all-American bowling alley. The space is the result of a lengthy renovation project overseen by the bar’s owner Luke Blahnik that has maintained a fine balance between innovation and historical preservation, with original features such as the lanes, pin setters and ball returns retained.
It was Singapore’s Atlas that took home the award at Asia’s 50 Best Bars 2024 for its legendary Jazz Age-inspired style, expansive triple-height ceilings, baroque-style frescos and distinctive 12-metre-high glass-fronted, bronze tower that holds more than 1,300 bottles of gin, accessed by an elegant staircase and mezzanine floor
Judge and jury
Atlas in Singapore impressed judges with its towering, grand features
As before, this year’s entries will be judged by an esteemed panel of hospitality design experts, each of whom will assess submissions based on six criteria:
Innovation: does the design stand out and provide something new or unique to the bar world?
Aesthetics: a grading of the artistic value of the bar, including its design, shape, colour, texture, finish and engineering.
Accessibility: consideration of all guests’ access to all areas of the bar and its facilities, as well as an assessment of its safety for guests and staff.
Ergonomics: functionality of the bar space, including bar stations, access to fridges, the height of speed rail and access to back bar. How easy is it for guests to navigate and how smooth is the flow through the bar’s facilities?
Ecological compatibility: potential environmental and ecological impact of the bar, considering its use of materials and processes used in the build; how responsibly it uses energy and interacts with its environment. Essentially, is the bar built to stand the test of time?
Emotional quotient: in addition to fulfilling its practical purpose, does the design create a sense of enjoyment and satisfaction?
As well as crafting a written entry that addresses the criteria, bars will also be asked to provide photography, schematic drawings, architectural plans and a video walk-through of their venue.
Meet the judges
When the entry phase closes on Monday 17 February, six of the most creative and experienced minds in hospitality design will whittle the applicants down the final winners.
Submissions will be judged by an international panel of design experts
The judges, who helped design the award’s criteria and will select the winner, are:
Alia Akkam: a native New Yorker, experienced drinks and design journalist and self-confessed Europhile, Alia Akkam has called Budapest home since 2015. She is a contributing editor at Hospitality Design and writes regularly for Architectural Digest's AD PRO vertical as well as ICON and OnOffice. Akkam has an affinity for writing about cocktails and bars, as well as interiors, hotels, travel, food and culture. She is the author of books on gin and hotel bars, with one dedicated to tequila forthcoming.
Anirudh Singhal: after helping launch numerous trend-setting restaurants and bars, Singhal is now the man behind Speedx, a firm built to design hospitality venues from the ground up on the principles of ergonomics and comfort. Speedx has built more than 800 bars across India, making it the largest bar design and build company in the subcontinent.
Bethan Ryder: with more than 25 years’ experience in design, interiors and travel journalism, Ryder is an expert in what makes a great bar. Now the executive editorial director at leading global trend forecasting agency WGSN, she has previously held senior editorial positions at Elle Decoration, Wallpaper and Telegraph Luxury.
Paul Semple: Semple is one of two masterminds behind the hospitality-focused interior design studio MSDO. With over 20 years’ experience working around the world, including over five years leading the global hospitality team at multinational architecture firm Hassell, Semple has been based in Singapore since 2004.
Scott Baird: Baird is a San Francisco Bay Area native and a hospitality veteran. After years behind the bar at lauded venues in the US, he founded the creative agency Rococo Cantaloupe, which is designed to “make drinks, throw parties and create fun”.
Shaun Clarkson: Clarkson has headed up his eponymous London-based design agency for more than three decades, working exclusively across the spectrum of hospitality. Known for his diversity of projects and for his vivid colour palette, Clarkson has been involved in brand development for drinks brands, as well as being a former bar operator himself.
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