City guide
The original ruin bar and still the best. Szimpla Kert occupies a crumbling courtyard in the Jewish Quarter that has been left deliberately unrestored, filled instead with mismatched furniture, projections, and local art. It opens on Sunday mornings as a farmers market, reinventing itself constantly while maintaining the anarchic spirit that made it famous. Come at 10pm and find your corner.
Where to drink
The Seventh District is where Budapest's bar culture was reinvented in the early 2000s when young Hungarians began converting the crumbling buildings of the former Jewish ghetto into makeshift bars. Szimpla Kert started
The inner city district flanking the Danube holds Budapest's grandest bar addresses. The Gerbeaud cafe terrace on Vorosmarty Square has been pouring coffee since 1858. Andrassy Avenue pushes north through increasingly up
Explore →Buda's castle district operates at a slower, more refined pace than the Pest side of the river. Wine bars with Hungarian cellar lists, whisky-focused hotel bars, and candlelit terrace spots overlooking the Danube charact
The Eighth District's reputation has shifted dramatically over the past decade. Once avoided after dark, it now houses some of Budapest's most interesting independent bars, record shop bars, and natural wine spots. Corvi
Known locally as Budapest's Broadway, Nagymező Street in the Sixth District combines theatre district energy with some of the city's most dependable cocktail bars. The stretch between Andrassy and Jozsef Attila concentra
South Buda remains largely undiscovered by visitors, which is exactly why it merits attention. The bars here serve the neighbourhood rather than tourists, prices reflect it, and the atmosphere is genuinely local. Bartok
Explore →Every bar in this guide was visited in person by a barsforKings editor. No bar is listed without a visit within the past 18 months, and every ranked bar is visited at least twice, on different nights, before it earns a place. This city is re-reviewed every 90 days, and each entry is approved by a named editor — never an algorithm and never a paid placement. Read our full methodology and editorial standards, or meet the editors behind the reviews.