The 10 Best Bars in Las Vegas, Ranked — From a 24-Hour Tiki Dive to a Rooftop 60 Floors Up

MONDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2026

Every bar in Las Vegas claims to be the best night of your trip. Almost none of them are where locals actually drink. This ranking crosses the whole map — Strip lounges, downtown dives, Arts District originals — and judges on the only criteria that matter: the drinks, the room, and whether you’d cross town for it twice.

02 The Headliners

1. Herbs & Rye — 3713 W. Sahara Ave. The godfather. A speakeasy-style steakhouse whose cocktail menu is organized by era, so you drink your way through cocktail history. Order a Sazerac or a Blood and Sand; stay for the half-price steak happy hour. Before this room opened in 2009, Vegas barely had a craft cocktail scene. Now it has one because of this bar.

2. The Chandelier — The Cosmopolitan. Three bars stacked inside one giant crystal chandelier, each level with its own personality — high-energy classics on the ground floor, bubbly up top. Level 1.5 is the pilgrimage: order the Verbena, the not-on-the-menu legend built around a Szechuan buzz button that makes your mouth tingle and the drink bloom.

3. Velveteen Rabbit — 1218 S. Main St., Arts District. Two sisters built the bar that started the Arts District’s cocktail era in 2013: vintage furniture, a pink patio built for golden hour, and seasonal menus built on house-made syrups and infusions that rotate before you can get bored. The most creative drinking in the city happens in this little room on Main Street.

4. Atomic Liquors — 917 Fremont St. Vegas history you can drink in. The oldest freestanding bar in town holds Nevada’s first tavern license, issued in 1952, and earned its name when regulars watched atomic test blasts from the roof. Today: a serious sour beer selection, a modern cocktail list, and a patio that fills up late.

5. The Laundry Room — inside Commonwealth, 525 Fremont St. Twenty-two seats, hidden behind a clothespin marker, with reservation clues and a red-light walk-in signal. The most intimate serious cocktail room downtown — bespoke drinks, hushed room, no scene.

03 Dives, Tiki and the Big Screen

6. Frankie’s Tiki Room — 1712 W. Charleston Blvd. Open 24 hours, dark as a cave, pouring some of the best rum drinks in town. Frankie’s is the classic answer to “where do we go at 5 a.m.” — a divey tiki landmark that has never once tried to be anything else.

7. The Golden Tiki — 3939 Spring Mountain Rd., Chinatown. Tiki turned up to 11: animatronic birds, fountains, a ceiling of shooting stars — and a real rum program underneath the theater. Open 24 hours; book ahead on weekends.

8. Sand Dollar Lounge — 3355 Spring Mountain Rd. A live-music bar since the 1970s that has hosted Muddy Waters and B.B. King, still booking bands most nights. The pizza is not optional. This is the neighborhood-joint entry, and it earns it every single night.

9. Circa Resort & Casino — Downtown. Two entries at one address. Downstairs, the sportsbook Circa bills as the largest in the world — stadium seating, a wall of screens, game day at maximum scale. Sixty floors up, Legacy Club does the opposite: fire pits, skyline views and build-your-own old fashioneds around a display of 1,000 ounces of gold.

10. Liquid Diet — Arts District. Hidden down an actual alley in a former auto garage, with the menu scrawled on butcher paper and changing constantly — culinary infusions, savory builds, bartenders clearly having fun. It landed on Esquire’s list of the best bars in America. Come for the difficulty of finding it; remember it for the drinks.

The Laundry Room — 22 seats, hidden in Commonwealth. Legacy Club — 60th floor of Circa, downtown.