Best Rooftop Bars in Tel Aviv (2025)

Teder.fm is Tel Aviv's most culturally significant bar in a city that takes cultural significance seriously. It began as a pirate radio station, became a cultural venue, and its rooftop terrace — open seasonally on a rooftop in central Tel Aviv with an open-air cinema screen — has become the bar that best represents what this city is at its most creative: casual, warm, artistically ambitious, and extremely good at having fun.

The cocktail menu changes regularly and reflects genuine curiosity — Middle Eastern botanicals, locally produced spirits, flavour combinations that feel specific to this city rather than imported from somewhere else. The outdoor cinema programming is erratic and wonderful: art-house films, Israeli new wave, international music videos projected on warm evenings while the city hums below. It is, by almost any measure, one of the most Tel Aviv experiences you can have.

The seasonal limitation is the only genuine drawback — but within that window, this is mandatory.

The Jaffa is, by universal agreement, one of the finest hotels in the Middle East — a former French hospital and Ottoman court building that John Pawson converted into a study in restrained luxury. Its rooftop pool terrace extends toward the Mediterranean with an unobstructed sea view that makes even the most jaded traveller pause. This is not a bar in the conventional sense — it's a hotel facility — but the bar service is excellent, the setting is extraordinary, and a late afternoon session here will recalibrate your understanding of what a good afternoon drink can feel like.

The cocktail list is concise and executed with precision. The crowd is a mix of hotel guests, creative industry Israelis who live nearby, and visitors with the good sense to reserve a poolside spot. Book ahead, particularly for weekend evenings when the sun sets directly over the sea from this angle. Jaffa's position relative to Tel Aviv means the light arrives here differently — warmer, more golden — than anywhere else on this list.

Radio EPGB sits deep in Florentin — the south Tel Aviv neighbourhood that functions as the city's creative id — and its compact rooftop terrace is where the neighbourhood comes to exhale. The music is the main attraction: a programming calendar that pulls Israeli indie, international post-punk, and leftfield electronic in equal measure, curated by residents who care deeply about the distinction between a DJ set and a playlist. The drinks are simple and well-priced: beers, basic cocktails, local wine.

This is not a bar for those seeking precision cocktails or studied ambiance. It is a bar for those who want to be in a room — or a rooftop — with people who are genuinely engaged with the city's cultural life. The terrace fills by 10pm on weekends; the crowd stays until the lights come up. Arrive with no plan and leave whenever you decide to.

The Bellboy Hotel is one of Florentin's most charming boutique operations, and its rooftop bar extends that charm into a drinking space that manages to be both genuinely local and accessible to visitors. The cocktail menu is the most considered on this list outside of the hotel properties: bartenders here have clearly trained seriously, and the menu reflects Mediterranean citrus, Israeli honey producers, and local herb infusions in combinations that feel specific to place rather than lifted from a generic craft menu.

The rooftop itself is small — perhaps thirty covers at most — which means it fills quickly and maintains an atmosphere of genuine intimacy rather than the managed chaos of some larger rooftop operations. Arrive before 7pm for the sunset window. The views from Florentin are partial — you're looking over low-rise residential buildings rather than a dramatic panorama — but the quality of light at dusk compensates entirely.

The Norman is Tel Aviv's most storied luxury hotel — a 1920s building on Nachmani Street that was rescued and restored into one of the finest boutique hotels in the region. Its rooftop pool terrace is among the most photographed drinking spaces in the city, for reasons that are entirely legitimate: the pool-level views toward the sea, the surrounding Bauhaus buildings below, and the quality of service that comes with a hotel of this calibre make this a genuinely elevated experience.

The bar programme here is serious. The cocktail list is brief and executed without compromise. The wine list reflects the extraordinary renaissance in Israeli fine wine — particularly from the Golan Heights and Upper Galilee — in thoughtful pours. The crowd on weekend evenings is beautiful, well-dressed, and very aware that they are in one of the city's prestige spaces. That self-consciousness is the only slight drawback in what is otherwise a near-perfect rooftop operation.

Kuli Alma is ostensibly a cultural centre with a bar. In practice, it functions as the beating heart of Tel Aviv's underground art and music scene, and its open-air upper level becomes a rooftop party space on the nights it operates. The walls are covered in commissioned murals. The sound system is taken seriously. The crowd includes artists, musicians, and the wide cross-section of people who gravitate toward spaces where things are actually happening rather than being simulated.

The drinks are honest and unpretentious — beers, shots, basic mixed drinks. The setting compensates for any lack of cocktail complexity. Kuli Alma operates on a different logic from the hotel rooftops and cocktail bars on this list: it is a space for being present in the city's cultural life rather than observing it. If that sounds appealing, Thursday or Friday night is when you'll find it at full pressure.

Hotel Montefiore occupies a 1930s building that has been operating as a boutique hotel and acclaimed restaurant for years. Its terrace — at street level but open-air, protected from the Montefiore Street bustle — provides one of the most genuinely peaceful drinking experiences in central Tel Aviv. The cocktail programme mirrors the restaurant's philosophy: restrained, seasonal, locally sourced where possible, executed without noise or drama.

This is the bar for a slow Tuesday afternoon, a long catch-up conversation, or a quiet drink before dinner in the restaurant below. The neighbourhood is one of Tel Aviv's most pleasant — tree-lined, Bauhaus-era buildings, near enough to Rothschild to be central but removed enough to feel calm. It does not compete with the energy of the city's louder rooftops, and that restraint is the entire point.

Rothschild 12 is a boutique hotel with a rooftop terrace that punches above its size class. The terrace itself is modest — perhaps twenty tables — but the position on the boulevard provides clear views along the tree-lined central median and the low-rise Bauhaus buildings that line it. On warm evenings the boulevard below hums with the particular energy that makes Tel Aviv one of the world's great cities for simply being out in public.

The bar programme is considered and well-executed, reflecting the hotel's design-conscious sensibility. Cocktails lean Mediterranean — aperitivo-style spritzes, citrus-forward gin drinks, Israeli spirits featured alongside European classics. The crowd is a pleasant mix of guests and neighbourhood residents who have adopted the terrace as a reliable local option. Nothing here demands superlatives, but everything is done well — which, in a crowded market, is its own kind of achievement.