The best cocktail bars in Birmingham

The best cocktail bar in Birmingham, and on the 2026 list the best in the country, is Couch at 1466 Pershore Road in Stirchley. It does not take bookings. The rest of the city's serious cocktail list is spread between the Jewellery Quarter, Pinfold Street by New Street station and Moseley, and the short version is this: go south for the drinks everyone talks about, go to the Quarter for whisky and the new Passing Fancies, and go to Moseley to dance.

Couch, Pershore Road, Stirchley

Couch came onto the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list at number 37 in 2022 and climbed every year until it was named the UK's top cocktail bar in February 2026. That is a neighbourhood bar on a B30 high street beating every hotel bar in London, and nobody on Pershore Road seems surprised. Each drink on the menu is built around a film: A Bronx Tale is lemon gin, blood orange and Cocchi di Torino vermouth; My Jamaican Guy is hibiscus rum, a vermouth blend and grapefruit. There is a rotating cocktail on draught and a short, considered wine list for anyone who came along under protest. It opens Wednesday to Saturday from 4pm to 11pm, walk-ins only, so get there early on a Friday.

Bar Ikigai, Pershore Road, Stirchley

Two hundred numbers up the same road, Bar Ikigai at 1266 Pershore Road takes its cue from the Japanese izakaya, where you go for a drink and something small after work. The menu runs on Japanese spirits, sake and cocktails, and if you cannot decide there are omakase options where the team chooses for you. It was the list's Newcomer of the Year in 2022. Do Couch and Ikigai on the same night and you have done Stirchley properly.

Passing Fancies, The Goodsyard, Jewellery Quarter

Passing Fancies spent its first years in the Custard Factory, closed the Digbeth site and reopened in April 2026 at 11 Station Way, in the new Goodsyard development on the edge of the Quarter. Matt Arnold and Eve Green have split it in three. Downstairs, Passing, is beer, wine and food. Upstairs, Fancies, is where the full cocktail menu lives. The Lab, a small room at the back, is where the bartenders try things out. The opening weekend sold out, so book if you can and walk in if you cannot.

Fox & Chance, Pinfold Street

Fox & Chance at 45 Pinfold Street is the answer when you have twenty minutes before a train out of New Street. It opened in September 2021, the walls are teal and the sofas are deep, and the name is a nod to the Chance Brothers and Charles Fox, Victorian industrialists tied to the city's railway. Most of the cocktails sit under £10: Rum Rum Plum, rum with plum and sparkling red wine, is £10. On Sundays two classic cocktails are £6 each. It is a drinking room, not a dining room, so eat first. Even the toilets are themed, on the West Midlands rail map.

Grain & Glass, Vyse Street, Jewellery Quarter

Grain & Glass, which started life as The Whisky Club, sits at 75-80 Vyse Street with a library of more than 300 open whiskies. That sounds like a place for specialists, and it can be, with bookable tastings and a room that seats 26. But the cocktail list is short and well made: a Whisky Sour, a Japanese Highball, an Old Fashioned, and for anyone who has never liked whisky, a daiquiri. Ask the bar to pour you something you have not heard of. They will.

The Cuban Embassy, St Mary's Row, Moseley

The Cuban Embassy at 23 St Mary's Row is in the old Bull's Head building in the middle of Moseley, and it is the loudest bar on this list by some distance. By its own count it keeps around 120 rums, so order a daiquiri or a mojito and let the bar choose the rum. Resident Latin musicians play on weeknights and the house band, Rhythms Del Toro, takes over at weekends. It opens at 5pm Monday to Thursday and runs until 2am on Fridays and Saturdays, which makes it the late finish for a night in B13.

A night out, three ways

• Stirchley: Couch at 4pm sharp, then up Pershore Road to Bar Ikigai.
• The Quarter: whisky at Grain & Glass on Vyse Street, then cocktails upstairs at Passing Fancies.
• Town: a cocktail at Fox & Chance on Pinfold Street, then the train or a taxi to Moseley for the Cuban Embassy's band.

Know before you go

Couch is walk-in only and closed Sunday to Tuesday, so do not build a Monday around it. Several of the best bars here are small, which means a queue on Friday and Saturday nights; arrive early or go midweek. If you have an old guide that sends you to 40 St Paul's, the Jewellery Quarter gin bar, it is out of date: owner Amanjot Johl closed it at the end of 2025 after ten years. The Quarter has not run short of places to drink since.