The 29 Best Places to Drink in Copenhagen

1. The 50 #66 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The 50 #24 · Europe's 50 Best Bars

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Finding Lidkoeb means crossing a courtyard behind a supermarket, through an unmarked alley, which is either annoying or half the point. The cocktail bar from the team behind Ruby spreads across three floors of a low-lit 18th-century building, all candles and dark wood and a long bar with a fourteen-strong house cocktail list. The kind of place that rewards the people willing to look for it.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The buzzer panel at the entrance includes one for the Embassy of Georgia, which you are advised not to press. Inside, this cocktail bar spreads across two floors of candlelit rooms with rugs, Chesterfield sofas, and enough tucked-away corners to disappear into for an entire evening. The vibe is old living room, the cocktails are the reason you came, and table service means you never have to leave your corner to prove it.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The record spins before you order, and at Bird that's not an accident. This Frederiksberg neighborhood cocktail bar runs weekly DJ nights with jazz at the core, but the music stays warm rather than loud, more living room than club. The highball list is the thing to work through, and the selections are more considered than the format usually demands. Named a Discovery by The 50, it's the kind of local bar that doesn't feel local only to the locals.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The menu rates each cocktail by booziness, which is either very helpful or a dare depending on your evening. This cocktail bar inside the Sanders hotel takes its name from the red velvet curtain at the Royal Danish Theatre next door, and carries the premise through: low light, a long list of classics and house drinks, and an atmosphere that makes whatever you're doing feel more significant than it probably is.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A cocktail bar on the top floor of Paper Island's 25hours Hotel, with the kind of fireplace and deep armchairs that make you forget you came for the view. The drinks list reads like a classics menu until you notice the foraged Danish produce quietly rewriting each recipe. It's a pub that got serious about its bar program without making a fuss about it, which is a very Copenhagen way to do things.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A marble-topped bar wraps around the back of this sunken cocktail bar in central Copenhagen, with cozy corners and secluded booths for when you want to disappear. The room runs warm and loud, more lively conversation than hushed reverence, which is a refreshing stance for a bar that takes its drinks seriously. Difford's Guide gives it five stars, and the unpretentious atmosphere makes that easy to believe.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The bar at Salon 39 occupies the lower level, and it is genuinely small, the kind of place where snagging a seat feels like a minor victory. By night it fills fast, and large groups get turned away so the lucky ones who squeeze in can actually enjoy themselves. Café by day, bar and restaurant by evening, it pulls a crowd that keeps coming back, which tells you something about how the drinks land.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Ring the bell at the unmarked black door at number 16, not 19, a misprint that may or may not be deliberate. Inside, this speakeasy cocktail bar runs on dim lighting, pressed tin ceilings, bare brick, and bartenders in bow ties doing their best 1920s straight-face. Get comfortable, because the real exercise is talking your way into The Bureau, a second, even more hidden room within the first hidden room.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The long bar here is the real competition for the fine-dining floor upstairs, and most nights it wins. This cocktail bar occupies the ground level of a Japanese-French restaurant, with a double-height ceiling and mood lighting that cycles through primary colors like a very sophisticated lava lamp. The drinks lean Japanese, pulling in shochu, sake, shiso, and Calpis in ways that make the menu feel like a genuine kitchen project rather than a theme.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A steep climb to the door opens into a wine bar that keeps things pleasantly simple: chequerboard floors, an old leather sofa, candles on bare wooden tables, and about 30 wines chalked up behind the counter. The kind of place where the list changes and nobody pretends otherwise. Snacks arrive without ceremony. The second room, warmer and a little looser, is where the evening tends to drift.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Named after its postal code, 1105 is a cocktail bar that plays nightclub without quite committing to the dance floor, which is probably for the best. The island bar runs like a catwalk through a long, narrow room, and the bartenders in white coats and bow ties behind it seem to know it. The crowd is well-dressed and aware of being watched, which in Copenhagen means they look effortlessly good about the whole thing.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A white letter K hanging outside is the only signal that you've found this small, low-lit cocktail bar tucked along the canal at Ved Stranden. The room is essentially one bar with a couple of loungey side pockets, done in a monochrome scheme that keeps the focus on the drinks. The founder built her name on housemade infusions and is credited with helping shape the Copenhagen cocktail scene before that was a thing people said.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The name conjures oak paneling and leather armchairs, but this cocktail bar on Birkegade is curved, contemporary, and very much alive. The U-shaped room wraps around an oak-topped bar counter, which is probably where the name actually comes from, though Danish speakers will note the street name and wonder what took everyone so long. The crowd figures it out fast enough, and the cocktails give them a reason to stay.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Semi-subterranean and narrow, Zefside fills fast once the weekend hits, with Edison bulbs strung above a long bar and a DJ doing their best to turn a bar into a club without technically being one. The name means nothing in Danish and is somehow pronounced "Southside," which tells you something about the vibe. Thirty-something professionals pack in, drink in hand, doing that polite standing-shuffle that passes for dancing when the ceiling is low.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide