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Since launching in 2024, the Pinnacle Guide has established itself as a who’s-who of the world’s most glamourous and innovative bars. And the Michelin-style list – which dishes out ‘Pins’ instead of ‘Stars’ – has been a fan of London’s drinking holes since its inception. Of its 192 featured bars around the globe, an impressive 33 are in the Big Smoke.
The Pinnacle Guide awards one, two or three Pins to establishments that are either ‘excellent’, ‘outstanding’ or ‘exceptional’. Up to very recently, only one bar in the world had three Pins: London’s Lyaness, which you can read a five-star Time Out review of here.
This week 46 new bars were added to the Pinnacle Guide, including three new three-Pin spots (meaning Lyaness is no longer the greatest drinkery in the world, in Pinnacle’s eyes). Several new bars were also added in London, with one place getting two Pins and two receiving one Pin.
So, which London bars are now Pinnacle-approved? Well, the two-Pin addition is The Emory Rooftop Bar. The sky-high Knightsbridge spot sits atop The Emory, a 60-room hotel by the owners of Claridge’s, and has a cocktail menu that was created in collaboration with Tato Giovannoni – a globally-renowned mixologist based in Buenos Aires.
The newly one-Pinned spots are a couple of slick hotel bars: American Bar at The Savoy and St James Bar.
Time Out London Food & Drink Editor Leonie Cooper paid American Bar (pictured below) a visit last year and awarded the place a full five stars. She described the ‘longest-surviving cocktail bar in London’ as ‘a veritable Joan Collins of sophisticated bars’ that ‘feels like stepping into the pages of the Great Gatsby’.
St James Bar (below) is a speakeasy-style estab in the Grade II-listed St James Sofitel just off Pall Mall. The Pinnacle Guide says it is ‘built around a Franglaise identity – a creative blend of French and British flavours, spirits, and traditions that shapes every element of the drinks programme’.
All the London bars in the Pinnacle Guide, May 2026
Three Pins
Two Pins
- Dover Yard
- The Emory Rooftop Bar
- Kioku Sake Bar
- Murder Inc
- Nipperkin
- The Spy Bar at Raffles
One Pin
- American Bar at the Savoy
- Artesian
- Bacchanalia
- The Bar Below
- Bar Kinky
- The Cocktail Trading Co.
- Equal Parts
- Eve Bar
- Florattica Rooftop
- The Guards Bar & Lounge at Raffles
- The K Bar
- Kol Mezcaleria
- Kwant Mayfair
- Nightjar Shoreditch
- The Pisco Bar at Coya Mayfair
- The Royal Cocktail Exchange
- Scales
- Sexy Fish
- Side Hustle
- Soma Canary Wharf
- Soma Soho
- St James Bar
- Swift Soho
- Velvet By Salvatore Calabrese
- Vesper Bar at The Dorchester
- Viajante87
Elsewhere in the UK Pinnacle Guide, Chester’s tbc* became the country’s first two-Pin bar outside a major city. Seven British drinkeries were newly added to the guide this time around, meaning that the UK remains Pinnacle’s most-represented country with 52 Pinned bars. You can check out the full Pinnacle Guide website here.
Find the London editions to previous rounds of the Pinnacle Guide here: April 2025, October 2024, May 2024.
🍸 The best bars in London, according to Time Out.
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