In June, Europe’s 50 Best Bars came to Amsterdam to unveil its first ever list, and the four best cocktail bars in Amsterdam below explain why one entry in that ranking is a thin account of the city. The ceremony filled the city with the continent’s bartenders, the countdown streamed worldwide, and when it was over, Line in Athens took the top spot. The host city, meanwhile, placed exactly one bar in the ranking.
That bar was Super Lyan, at No. 42, which also collected the title of Best Bar in the Netherlands. It is a deserved placing and nobody in Amsterdam is complaining about it. But anyone who actually drank their way through the week will tell you the same thing: one entry is a thin account of what this city is doing right now.
The list is voted by 300 anonymous industry experts across the continent, each choosing bars where they had their best experiences over the previous 18 months. That system rewards reputation and reach, which is exactly what it is designed to do. It is slower to catch a room that opened eight months ago, or a bar that the trade adores but tourists have not found yet. Amsterdam currently has both. Here are the four best cocktail bars in Amsterdam to drink in before the next vote closes.
Super Lyan
Ryan Chetiyawardana, better known as Mr Lyan, opened his first bar outside London here in 2019, in a 17th century canal house on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal. What could have been an import instead became a love letter to the city, built with local bartenders and finished in neon and vivid 1950s color.
The drinks are playful reinventions of classics, technically serious without ever announcing it. The current menu, Boroughs of Amsterdam, turns the city’s neighborhoods into cocktails: the 020 Martinez, the Nieuwe-tini. It is the most internationally recognized bar in the country and the easiest recommendation on this list, which is precisely why it should not be the only one anybody makes.
Sins of Sal
Down a narrow, dimly lit room in the Jordaan, Sins of Sal does everything Latin American cooking is supposed to disapprove of, on the plate and in the glass. Martin Eisema serves guilty-pleasure cocktails alongside Latin street food late into the night, with a list that includes the KFC Daisy and the Flip-Flop Margarita.
The jokes in the names hide how carefully the drinks are built. In four years the bar has earned a 50 Best Discovery listing and, more tellingly, the loyalty of the trade. This is where Amsterdam’s bartenders drink when they finish their own shifts, which remains the only review worth anything.
Fitz’s Bar
Inside Pillows Hotel Maurits at the Park, on the edge of Oosterpark, Nick Vrielink and his team have spent years building a room that feels like a door into the 1920s: dark wood, velvet, low light. In 2026 Gault&Millau named Fitz’s Bar Cocktail Bar of the Year in the Netherlands.
Every Fitz’s menu runs on a single theme. The current one, Aromas of the World, is the most inventive piece of menu design in the city: guests are handed a trolley of house-made perfumes and choose their drink by scent alone, before reading a word of description. The cocktails behind those scents draw on England, Turkey, Mexico and Japan, from the fruity Agatha’s Trap served in a teacup to the savory Dashi-(t)ini. It is a gimmick only until you try it, at which point it becomes the reason you stay for three more.
Shakerato
Eric van Beek left Amsterdam, went to Mexico City, and helped build Handshake Speakeasy into the best bar in the world in 2024, the first Mexican bar ever to top The World’s 50 Best Bars. It sits at No. 2 today. Then he came home.
Shakerato opened on the Stadhouderskade after an 18 month delay, and the wait shows in the detail. The name comes from the Italian iced coffee, and the bar takes its cues from Italian living: precision without stiffness, flavor without complication. Cocktails are elegant rather than elaborate, and the food comes from Dorus Floris of Showw, the Amsterdam restaurant that won a Michelin star within its first year. Order a mini cocktail while you decide on the real one.
Where to Drink Among the Best Cocktail Bars in Amsterdam Right Now
Rankings are useful. They send people to good rooms and they give bartenders something to work toward. But a list is a snapshot taken by people who were mostly somewhere else, and its blind spot is always the same: the bar that is too new, too local, or too strange to have reached enough voters yet.
Amsterdam has three of those and one bar that already broke through. Super Lyan earned its place on Europe’s 50 Best Bars 2026. Sins of Sal, Fitz’s Bar and Shakerato are the argument that it should not have gone alone. Give the academy 18 months and a few more visits, and the Dutch section of that list is going to look very different.
