Hong Kong's Rooftop Bars, From the 118th Floor Down

Ozone is 118 floors up, and says so

Ozone sits on the 118th floor of the Ritz-Carlton in the International Commerce Centre, West Kowloon, and the hotel calls it the world's highest bar. The room does what a room at that height should: floor-to-ceiling glass, unbroken sightlines across Western Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, live music and DJ sets most nights, a Sunday brunch listed at HK$688. It isn't a secret. Book ahead, especially near sunset, when the wait for a window table gets long — and go for the height, not for a quiet drink, because the room is built for a view first and a conversation second.

Sugar reopened with a menu written for Hong Kong cinema

On the 32nd floor of EAST, Hong Kong in Island East, Sugar relaunched in November 2025 with a seven-drink Golden Age cocktail menu built around Hong Kong's own films rather than the harbour outside the window. The Chungking Express drink runs citrus and Japanese gin as a nod to the film's canned pineapple; Kung Fu Hustle arrives with a lollipop; In the Mood for Love, Infernal Affairs and Fly Me to Polaris each get a glass of their own, alongside share plates from a new kitchen team. The terrace still faces Victoria Harbour and Kowloon, best at sunset, but the venue describes its own crowd as after-work regulars rather than a tourist stop — a neighbourhood bar that happens to sit 32 floors up.

Central splits into an arched room and a glass one

Two rooftops a few minutes' walk apart in Central read as opposites. Popinjays, on top of the colonial-era Murray building on Cotton Tree Drive, wraps one of the largest terraces in the district around the hotel's arched windows, runs a daily aperitivo hour from 3pm, and has recently added a Dom Pérignon bar with a caviar-and-crudo menu on the side. Cardinal Point, at the top of the newer Forty-Five tower inside the Landmark complex, is glass and steel by comparison — an indoor-outdoor split that stays open till late, with a terrace the venue itself recommends for the last hour before sunset and the first after sunrise. Same skyline, from buildings forty years apart, read in opposite registers: one Dolce Vita, one trading floor.

Aqua Spirit is the one that takes walk-ins

On the 17th floor of H Zentre in Tsim Sha Tsui, Aqua Spirit runs two outdoor terraces, resident DJs, and a smart-casual door that doesn't require a reservation — a genuine rarity among Hong Kong's rooftop rooms, most of which expect a booking by Thursday for a Saturday table. It shares a floor with an Italian and a Japanese kitchen under the same operator, which makes it the fallback when Popinjays or Cardinal Point are full and the honest first choice for anyone who just wants a table without planning a week ahead. It closes at midnight Sunday to Thursday, 1am on Friday and Saturday.

Two names worth flagging for what they no longer are, since older lists still carry them. Sevva, the Central bar widely credited with starting Hong Kong's rooftop scene, closed in 2024 and has not reopened. Wooloomooloo Steakhouse in Wan Chai still runs its 31st-floor restaurant, but the rooftop bar that put it on round-ups for over a decade has been shut. Neither rooftop belongs on a guide dated 2026, whatever a search result from three years ago still says.