Hong Kong Now Has Seven Bars in Asia's Top 50; Singapore Has Four

A Non-Stop Flight Between Hong Kong and Singapore Takes Three Hours and Fifty Minutes

Fly non-stop between Hong Kong and Singapore and you land in three hours and fifty minutes — short enough that a long weekend covers both cities, not just one. That's worth saying up front, because most comparisons between these two treat them as opposites on separate continents. They aren't. They're the two cities that have spent the last five years arguing, politely and with real trophies, over which one makes the better bar. This year the argument has an interesting answer: it depends which list you read, and neither city gets to be smug about it.

Hong Kong Holds the World's Best Bar and Seven Spots on Asia's Top 50

Bar Leone, in Hong Kong's Central district, was named The World's Best Bar 2025 at a ceremony held in the city, at Kai Tak Cruise Terminal, on 8 October 2025 — the first time a Hong Kong address has topped the global list. It slipped to third when Asia's own list came out the following July, still enough to hold the title Best Bar in Hong Kong. It wasn't the only Hong Kong name on the page. When Asia's 50 Best Bars 2026 was revealed at Wynn Palace, Macau, on 28 July 2026, Hong Kong placed seven bars on the main fifty: Bar Leone at #3, Gokan at #22, Coa at #24, Mius at #36, Argo at #37, Montana at #47 and Penicillin at #49.

Singapore Placed Four Bars in Asia's Top 50 This Year, Down From Eleven in 2024

Singapore's showing on the same 2026 list was thinner: four bars, led by Jigger & Pony at #9, which kept its own title, Best Bar in Singapore. Nutmeg & Clove placed #12, Offtrack #16 and Origin Bar #43. Two years earlier the city put eleven bars on that same list. One trade outlet called 2026 an uncomfortable year for Singapore's bar scene, and the count backs that up.

The harder, properly global list tells a gentler story. On the World's 50 Best Bars 2025 — judged against bars from more than twenty countries, not just the region — Singapore matched Hong Kong bar for bar. Jigger & Pony placed #9 and Nutmeg & Clove #50; Hong Kong's own tally was Bar Leone at #1 and Coa at #38. Two bars each, on the one list that measures against the rest of the planet. A regional dip and a global tie can both be true at once, and we think both deserve printing.

Context matters here too: neither city actually topped Asia's own list this year. Guangzhou's Hope & Sesame took the number one spot in July 2026, the first time a mainland Chinese bar has done so on that ranking. Hong Kong and Singapore have spent five years treating each other as the rivalry that counts. The bar in front of both of them right now is somewhere else entirely.

Hong Kong's Winning Rooms Are Small; Singapore's Are Built to Multiply

The two scenes are shaped differently, too. Hong Kong's award-winning bars tend to be compact, single-site rooms carved out of old walk-up buildings around Central and Sheung Wan — a handful of seats, a short list, no franchise plan attached. Singapore's leading names more often sit inside hospitality groups built to scale: the team behind Jigger & Pony opened two further venues in the city across 2025 and 2026, growing a name into a small stable rather than protecting one room. Neither approach is the smarter business call in the abstract. They're just different bets on what a bar is for.

A cramped room that seats fourteen and a cocktail programme built to run across three addresses at once are both legitimate answers to the same question: how do you make a bar worth flying in for.

A Bottle of Spirits Is Taxed Very Differently in Each City

Hong Kong has charged zero duty on wine and beer since February 2008, when it became what its own government calls the first free wine port among major economies. In October 2024 it went further, cutting duty on liquor above 30% ABV from 100% to 10% on the portion of any bottle priced above HK$200. The government's own account, delivered to the Legislative Council seven months later, put duty-paid liquor import volume up more than 15% and import value up nearly 60% over the following six and a half months. Singapore runs close to the opposite structure: a flat excise of roughly S$88 per litre of pure alcohol on spirits, plus 9% GST, with no price-tier break for a premium bottle. Buy the same good bottle in each city and you're paying under two different philosophies of tax, not just two different numbers.

Hong Kong Bars Aren't Bound by a Closing Time; Singapore's Still Are

Hong Kong places no blanket limit on how late a licensed bar can pour. The Liquor Licensing Board only restricts hours where it writes that condition into an individual licence, and it mostly does so for premises inside residential buildings. Singapore is more prescriptive: bars across most of the city serve until 3am on weeknights and Saturdays, extending to 4am on Sundays and public holidays, under standing rules. One precinct now runs later on a permanent footing: after a year-long pilot, the government formalised 4am liquor hours on Thursday and Friday nights across the Clarke Quay, Boat Quay and Upper Circular Road area with effect from 18 August 2026 — the lasting version of a looser-hours experiment that in 2018 was cut short after four months over safety concerns. Outside that zone, the standard caps still apply.

What Doing Both Cities in One Trip Actually Requires

In practice: Hong Kong rewards wandering. Dense clusters of small rooms around Central and Sheung Wan mean you can bar-hop on foot without watching a clock, and some of the best-known names still run on a first-come basis — Bar Leone, for one, takes no reservations at all. Singapore rewards planning instead: book the well-known rooms ahead if you can, and decide where your night ends before it starts, because outside the extended-hours trial zone, last call arrives on schedule whether you're ready or not. Pack for both and the 3 hour 50 minute flight between them stops being a research trip and starts being one long weekend with two different sets of house rules.

Two Cities Are Having Different Years, Not One Contest With a Single Winner

Call it straight: Hong Kong is having the better year by the numbers that get talked about at award ceremonies — a World's Best Bar, seven bars on Asia's list, a tax regime that just turned friendlier to serious drinking. Singapore is having a rebuilding year on the regional count, not a collapse. It still matched Hong Kong bar for bar on the tougher global list, and its biggest name is expanding rather than shrinking. We're allowed to be proud of what's happening two streets from our own front door. We're also allowed to say Singapore's scene is real, well run, and worth the flight.