Paris has become one of the great cocktail cities. The best bars in Paris crowd the 3rd arrondissement and the Montorgueil quarter in the 2nd, with more along the Canal Saint-Martin, in Belleville and in grand hotels such as the Crillon. Four are in the top 50 of The 50 Best Bars 2026, led by The Cambridge Public House at No. 13, the world's first B Corp certified bar, and Bar Nouveau at No. 15, The Best Bar in France at Europe's 50 Best Bars 2026. De Vie, a new entry at No. 23, works without commercial ice machines, Danico, at No. 26, fills the former Jean Paul Gaultier flagship in Galerie Vivienne, and Little Red Door is at No. 93 on the 51-100 list. Le Syndicat pours only French spirits, Bar 1802 keeps more than 1,500 rums, and Harry's New York Bar, open near the Opéra since 1911, is credited with the French 75 and the Sidecar. Bar Nouveau takes no reservations but opens at 3pm, so go early. These are the seventeen we would start with.

Hyacinthe Lescoët's upscale cocktail pub climbed nineteen places in 2025 to reach No. 20 on the World's 50 Best Bars, earning the Nikka Highest Climber Award and the Ketel One Sustainable Bar Award in a single ceremony. The July 2024 acquisition of Little Red Door expanded Lescoët's influence across two of the Marais' most significant addresses. Bar Manager Nicolas Goradesky oversees a program that integrates sustainability into every decision, waste reduction, seasonal sourcing, energy efficiency, without sacrificing the warmth of a British pub transplanted to Rue de Poitou. The latest lists place it at No. 13 on The 50 Best Bars 2026 and No. 7 on Europe's 50 Best Bars 2026.

Co-founded by twins Sara and Hadrien Moudoulaud alongside Marc Puzzuoli and Rémy Savage, the 2022 World's Best Mixologist, Bar Nouveau distils its program to six cocktails and executes every one with the focus that a limited menu demands. The Art Nouveau setting on Rue des Haudriettes frames modern interpretations of classic and lesser-known French bistro drinks. At No. 15 on The 50 Best Bars 2026 (No. 17 in 2025), this Marais bar proves that constraint can be a creative accelerant. Savage's involvement bridges his work across three Paris venues into a coherent philosophy of quality through reduction. It was a Top 4 finalist for Best New International Cocktail Bar at the 2024 Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards. The bar holds No. 5 on Europe's 50 Best Bars 2026.

Alex Francis and Barney O'Kane, both Little Red Door alumni, opened this Montorgueil bar-and-counter-restaurant in March 2025 on strict seasonality and locality: everything from independent French growers and distillers, no commercial ice machines (drinks are pre-batched and held at precise temperatures), kitchen waste upcycled into fruit wines and aperitifs. The core offer is a five-step seasonal drinks tasting. No.34 in Europe's 50 Best Bars 2026 with the Ketel One Sustainable Bar Award, and winner of Best New International Cocktail Bar at the 2026 Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards.

Bar Director Nico de Soto has operated from the former Jean Paul Gaultier flagship on Rue Vivienne for long enough that Danico now functions as an institution of Paris's modern cocktail era. Ranked No. 26 on The 50 Best Bars 2026 (No. 30 in 2025), the program carries the confidence of a venue that helped establish the city's reputation and continues to shape it. Head Bartender Corentin Gaudin runs daily service with a team that balances de Soto's creative vision with the consistency that regulars demand. Danico is the bar that made the 2nd arrondissement a cocktail destination. It won Best International Restaurant Bar at the 2024 Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards. It currently stands at No. 19 on Europe's 50 Best Bars 2026.

The Rue Charlot pioneer that helped launch Paris's cocktail renaissance reopened in July 2024 under new ownership by Hugo Gallou and Hyacinthe Lescoët, with Oliver Eardley, formerly of The Savoy, London, installed as head bartender. The transition marked one of the year's most closely watched bar stories, and the early program signals ambition: technically precise, narratively driven, and built on the kind of hospitality intelligence that Eardley honed in London's most demanding rooms. Little Red Door's second act may surpass the first.

The Organization for the Defence of French Spirits works exclusively with French-produced alcohol, no exceptions, no compromises. Robin Davalo took over direction in November 2022, with Rémy Savage serving as associate director, and the Faubourg Saint-Denis bar continues to prove that France's distillation heritage provides sufficient depth for a complete cocktail program. Calvados, armagnac, cognac, pastis, and domestic gin replace the usual international suspects. Le Syndicat turns a nationalist constraint into creative liberation.

Head Bartender Arnaud Volte and Bar Director Kevin Rigault deliver the 2025 menu, titled A Sense of Memories, from a room overlooking Place de la Concorde that drips with Parisian grandeur. The program layers seasonal French ingredients with techniques that honor the Crillon's heritage while pushing into contemporary territory. Live music fills the space nightly, and the terrace beneath the arcades provides one of the city's most elegant outdoor drinking positions. Les Ambassadeurs earns its place through setting, service, and ambition in equal measure.
Twenty-five seats, unchanged decor, and a Dry Martini recipe that has survived every trend the cocktail industry has produced since Ernest Hemingway drank here with F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1920s. The Ritz's jewel-box bar delivers tailor-made cocktails with a formality that reads as genuine rather than performative, ladies' drinks arrive with a rose, and the bartender remembers your order from your last visit. Bar Hemingway does not compete with modern cocktail bars. It occupies a category they cannot enter.

The bar that ignited Paris's speakeasy movement in 2007 still operates without reservations from a Rue Saint-Sauveur basement that looks unchanged from opening night. Part of Experimental, the group that now spans hotels and restaurants across Europe, ECC retains the energy of a founder-led independent: gin-forward, tequila-curious, and resolutely nocturnal. The venue's influence on Paris drinking culture cannot be overstated, every craft cocktail bar in the city traces a line of descent back to this room.
Margot Lecarpentier, a former lawyer who retrained as a bartender in New York, runs this Belleville venue with a sustainability focus and a cocktail program that now extends into her role as head mixologist for the Alain Ducasse Group. The Minto Martini, built with gin, sake, pear, dry vermouth, and peppermint, captures a style that balances botanical complexity with approachable construction. Exposed brick, bright yellow tiling, and foliage ceiling give the room an energy that Lecarpentier's expanding influence across Paris gastronomy only amplifies.

Born 26 November 1911, when a Manhattan bar's interior was dismantled and shipped to 'Sank Roo Doe Noo', the phonetic address that let Anglophones direct any taxi to 5 rue Daunou. Run by the MacElhone family for four generations (today Franz-Arthur, Harry's great-grandson), it claims the invention of the Bloody Mary, White Lady, Sidecar, French 75 and Blue Lagoon, keeps 400+ cocktails in the repertoire, and hosts nightly piano from 10pm in the room where Gershwin composed An American in Paris. It currently stands at No. 27 on Europe's 50 Best Bars 2026.

The Marais classic that hides one of Paris's defining cocktail bars behind the back door of a bright, all-white taqueria. Push through and the room turns dark and agave-obsessed, mezcal, tequila and the signature La Guêpe Verte (jalapeño, cucumber, agave nectar), with shredded-pork tacos up front. Open daily.
A cocktail bar in the 11th arrondissement built around vinyl records, with the back bar given over to a record collection rather than bottles. It was founded by Matthieu Biron and Guillaume Quenza. Drinks are made with classical technique, hand-carved ice and house infusions, and floor-to-ceiling windows open onto the street in warm weather.

The rum sanctuary of the Alexandre Dumas-themed Hôtel Monte Cristo in the 5th, dozens of rums open for tasting, including 49 exclusive house cuvées selected yearly since 2018, with structured tasting flights, masterclasses and an on-site rum boutique. The new 'MATIERES' cocktail menu offers twelve original creations at a flat €17, six months in development.

The Marais 'bar à manger' with the circular bar at its center, oysters, natural wine and cocktails in a nautical room of white-washed wood and pastel blues, its bay windows thrown open in summer. Creative shareable cooking rounds out serves like the Invisible Gin (apricot eau de vie, pineapple, ginger). Open every day. It was a Top 4 finalist for Best International Restaurant Bar at the 2025 Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards.

CopperBay Lancaster is the second home of CopperBay, the cocktail bar Aurélie Panhelleux, Elfi Fabritius and Julien Lopez opened on Rue Bouchardon in the 10th in 2014. The trio took over the bar of the Hôtel Lancaster, an eighteenth century townhouse a few steps from the Champs-Élysées, in spring 2024, and brought the original's deep blue palette and yacht club ease to a room of wood panelling, gilt-framed paintings and a round marble bar beneath a tree. The current menu is a tour of France told through French distillers, from heritage houses such as Chartreuse, Drouin and Ferrand to a new generation of independents, and on Thursdays a DJ plays vinyl. Club Oenologique named it among the seven best Paris hotel bars for cocktail lovers.

Mesures is a cocktail and music bar in the Haut Marais modeled on the Japanese jazz kissa, the listening bars where the record collection and the sound system matter as much as the drinks. It was co-founded on Rue de Saintonge by bartender Guillaume Castaignet, formerly of Castor Club, Hôtel Particulier and Classique Café, and David Asseraf, in a room of dark wood, worn metal and a marble counter, with records played on an all-analogue hi-fi. Castaignet builds each drink on three complementary ingredients, with sake at the center of much of the list, alongside some twenty sakes by the glass, carafe or bottle. Le Fooding counts it among the best cocktail bars in Paris.
These 17 are the starting point. The full BarMagazine directory covers every listed bar in Paris, with a map, filters by bar type, and new openings as we verify them.