Two categories define how a city drinks: the cocktail bar and the craft beer bar. Across 72 cities they are not close. We track 1,104 cocktail bars and 391 craft beer bars, a 2.8 to 1 lead for the shaker over the tap.
The lead holds almost everywhere. Of the cities with a meaningful presence in both categories, only Krakow tips craft beer over cocktails, eight to six. That is the single exception in the dataset.
| Rank | City | Craft beer | Cocktail | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Krakow | 8 | 6 | 1.33 |
| 02 | Brussels | 10 | 9 | 1.11 |
| 03 | Philadelphia | 7 | 8 | 0.88 |
| 04 | Reykjavik | 9 | 12 | 0.75 |
| 05 | Nashville | 7 | 10 | 0.70 |
| 06 | Edinburgh | 8 | 12 | 0.67 |
| 07 | Montreal | 9 | 14 | 0.64 |
| 07 | Copenhagen | 7 | 11 | 0.64 |
The cocktail cities are not close
At the other end, several cities barely tap a keg. Athens tracks 20 cocktail bars and zero in the craft beer category. Bali and Marrakech show the same shape, cocktail rooms with no craft beer presence at all.
| Rank | City | Craft beer | Cocktail | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Athens | 0 | 20 | 0.00 |
| 02 | Dubai | 1 | 9 | 0.11 |
| 03 | Zurich | 3 | 23 | 0.13 |
| 03 | Osaka | 3 | 23 | 0.13 |
| 05 | London | 5 | 31 | 0.16 |
| 06 | Paris | 4 | 24 | 0.17 |
| 07 | Madrid | 3 | 15 | 0.20 |
| 07 | Miami | 3 | 15 | 0.20 |
London is the clearest case. It carries 31 cocktail bars against five craft beer rooms, a six to one tilt, even though Britain has a deep beer tradition. The cocktail bar simply scales better in a high rent global city, a point that fits the wider 2026 category data.
Geography, not size, sets the split
The pattern is regional. Northern and central Europe and craft minded North American cities lean closest to beer: Brussels, Krakow, Reykjavik, Edinburgh, Copenhagen, Philadelphia, Nashville and Montreal all cluster near parity. Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cities lean hard to cocktails.
That tracks drinking culture more than economics. Belgium and Czechia built their bar identity on beer, so Brussels and Krakow keep a tap led scene. Greece and the United Arab Emirates did not, so Athens and Dubai read as cocktail towns in the data.
"Krakow is the only city in 72 where craft beer outnumbers the cocktail bar. Everywhere else, the shaker wins."
How to use the split
If you plan a trip around what you drink, the ratio is a fast filter. For a beer led weekend, Brussels and Krakow reward you, and our 25 best craft beer bars in Europe maps the best of them. For a cocktail trip, Athens, Zurich and London run the deepest benches, covered in our 25 best cocktail bars in Europe.
You can also read the split by category page: the craft beer index and the cocktail bar index show the same divide city by city. For how Berlin balances both, see our Amsterdam versus Berlin bars comparison.
Methodology
Dataset. barsforkings.com master index, bars-master-72-cities.csv. Sample size 3,631 bars across 72 cities. Fields used: city, category. Pulled June 2026.
Method. For each city we counted bars in the craft-beer and cocktail-bars categories and computed the craft-to-cocktail ratio. To avoid noise, the city tables include only cities with at least six bars across the two categories combined. Totals are full-index counts.
External sources. None required. Every figure on this page is a direct count from the dataset. National drinking-culture context is general background, not a sourced statistic.
