So you’ve read the list and been regaled by the tales of triumph and good deeds. It’d probably help now to provide a little more context around the rankings – the threads that connect them and the trends we can tease out.

We can’t start anywhere but at the top where, for the first time in five years, we have a new number one, with Monica Berg handing over the baton to Iain McPherson.

There’s no need for comparison between the two here, other than to say that voting was tight and both deserve their plaudits. We’ve talked a lot about Monica Berg over the past five editions – how she has come to define a generation of bartenders who have an ethical, far-sighted approach to their work – so let’s drop the spotlight on Iain McPherson this time, the most influential bar world figure in 2025.

The man behind Panda & Sons, Nauticus and The Edinburgh Bar Show is someone people like. He is affable, charming and down to earth – not always traits you associate with star-tenders who bestride the global bar industry.

He is seemingly everywhere at once,  traversing the bar globe in sync with its rotations, giving talks, masterclasses – often on his sub-zero cocktail-making techniques – and guest shifts. 

Iain globetrots with purpose. The profile and exposure he gains is part of a wider plan to create opportunities back home – for his bar, his city Edinburgh, where he’s co-founded a bar show, and Scotland.

Often donning a kilt (although sometimes a Panda suit) Iain sees himself as a sort of bartender ambassador for his country. The Panda Highland Games was his latest idea to unite worlds, while having a lot of fun in the process.

These are qualities you might spot in the rest of the top five too: the aforementioned Monica Berg and in third Simone Caporale who is at the forefront of bars right now, both modern (Sips) and old (Boadas), and now Montana as part of a super-group with Lorenzo Antinori, spreading his influence into Asia.

The ethically minded Jean Trinh of Alquimico in Cartagena, whose work with rural communities in Colombia has quite literally changes lives, is someone whose work is bigger than bars. Many talk of him as an inspirational figure. Then there’s Danil Nevsky who, through his plain-speaking, no-holds-barred commentary, has established himself as the de facto global ambassador for bartenders.

These are some of the hardest working people in the industry, and they are seen to make the bar world a better place for everyone.

By role

Two-thirds of members of Bar World are bartenders or bar owners. And this is even more pronounced in the upper echelons of the list. Four out of the top five are owners of venues in The World’s 50 Best bars. Widen that out and you find that seven out of the top 10 own 50 Best venues or 15 from the top 20. Zoom out further and you start to see more diversity, though more than half of the entire list are associated with bars in 50 Best’s 1-100 and their Asia and North America guides.

The next most likely role for a member of Bar World is a consultant (16), be it for bars – think Anna Sebastian – or brands, such as Danil Nevsky. Most consultants, though, consider themselves educators too and are thus categorised together, along with event organisers such as Hannah Sharman-Cox.

That job type was closely followed by media (11), some of which are also consultants and educators – for example Francois Monti – but we categorise by primary (reputationally if not financially) job function.

Industry figures from the list who work for brands deserve some praise – the world of recognition doesn’t always look as generously on them. These eight members of Bar World are seen as having a deeper resonance than representing brands. They are commentators on wider issues – take Lauren Mote and Jackie Summers – or are people such as Diageo’s Ara Carvallo and Bacardi’s Colin Asare Appiah, who also have progressive agendas and even events outside of their day jobs, with Barra Mexico and Ajabu in Africa, respectively.

Geography

While the big bar awards now distribute their gongs more evenly around the world, much of the wider bar community is still concentrated in London and New York. Bars are normally shorter-lived than careers so these two cities’ dominance for the first two decades of the millennium has created worldwide figures who remain bar-hold names years later. This year London is the city of most influence in the global bar industry, with 13 of the 100 members based there. New York closely followed with 11. But looking beyond frequency to ranking you can see that London exerts more influence – three of the top 10, or eight of the top 50, are from London. Meanwhile, New York’s first entry comes in at number 32, with more than half its number from 53-98.

So if that all feels like old news, let’s see which cities are coming up on the rails. There are two that both have five members – Paris and Hong Kong. The French capital’s numbers are over-stating its global influence a little – more than half of its members share their time in the capital with other cities around the world, and three are all associated with one bar. Instead, look to Hong Kong which, in its inter-city tussle with Singapore, seems to be winning. With the likes of Lorenzo Antinori, Jay Khan, Beckaly Franks, Ezra Star and Agung Prabowo, it has a line-up of names that draw attention in from the outside world. With four members each are Tokyo and Buenos Aires.

The mix

Given that our poll offers voters no prompts as to names they should vote for, it says something of the consensus of opinion that 79 of the 100 names this year featured in last year’s list. In fact, of those 21 names that weren’t in the 2024 list, 11 are familiar to past lists (from 2019-2023), leaving only 10 entirely new entries. A slow-moving list may not catch as many headlines as a volatile one, but it shows that there is a consistency of polling – and thinking.

Read the Bar World 100 digital magazine here.