7 Cocktail Trends to Watch in 2025

But don’t be fooled: minimalist drinks may present themselves as simple, but they’re far from it in their preparation. Despite focusing on fewer ingredients — often no more than five — the way those components are developed are highly technical and often take days of labour.

Take the Kazimir from London’s A Bar With Shapes For Name, for example. The cocktail is a seemingly straightforward blend of “vodka, peach yogurt and absinthe blanche,” as the menu reads, but it’s a drink that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

To make this minimalist serve vodka and peach yogurt are clarified in a centrifuge, then adjusted with sugar and acid before being finished with a few drops of absinthe to tie it all together. It’s served without a garnish, but the flat bowl-like double rocks glass and clear ice cube, which contains an iridescent prism within it, give the cocktail the visual appeal worthy of its refinement. It’s a trend that primarily exists in higher-end cocktail bars, but it’s one that enthusiasts can expect to encounter globally.

It’s no secret that the camera drinks first in the age of social media. And most bartenders and owners are well-aware of this phenomenon as they notice how theatrical presentations (e.g. Connaught Bar’s Martini Trolley service) and visually-attractive cocktails — be it an eye-catching blue drink, or one spewing clouds of liquid nitrogen — spread like wildfire throughout the bar once a single guest orders one.

With apps like Tik Tok and Instagram serving as the primary source of marketing for bars, it’s no surprise more businesses — beyond just craft cocktail bars — are embracing the trend of creating social media-worthy garnishes, and designing theatrical ways of presenting cocktails to guests as a way to garner some free marketing.

While there was an era of tacky, maximalist garnishes that dominated the 2010s during the early days of photo-first social media, the modern Insta-worthy garnish that’s come into vogue is slightly more refined.

In the case of Handshake Speakeasy’s Banana Split, a minimalist cocktail is juxtaposed with a banana cream-filled chocolate lego garnish, demonstrating the confluence of multiple cocktail trends. At Shinji’s in New York City, the bar created a high-concept twist on the classic Screwdriver that is served in a picture-perfect, hollowed-out orange that’s designed to evoke nostalgic memories of the old Tropicana orange juice adverts from the 1990s. And at tropical cocktail bar Kiki Lounge on the not-so tropical Isle of Man, their tableside Zombie service livens up the room with the cinnamon-induced pyrotechnics that gets the whole bar filming the spectacle. With the growing cohort of Gen Z drinkers seeking more enticing experiences when socialising with friends at bars and restaurants, you can expect to see this trend continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

Enter the novel alternative: tiny cocktails, or micro-sized versions of beloved classics, like the Martini and Irish Coffee, and original creations alike that allow enthusiasts to enjoy the drinks they love without the alcohol content of a full-sized cocktail.

In addition to a book dedicated to miniature mixology being released in February 2025 by Penguin Random House called Tiny Cocktails (a shameless plug from your fellow author), the New York Times has also recently noticed an uptick in this unique drink format as bars globally embrace the trend at scale as a more flavourful way to drink less.

In London, Tayer + Elementary’s One-Sip Martini, a shot-sized Martini variation served with a blue cheese-stuffed olive, has become a cult favourite since the bar opened in 2019 and has played a significant role in pushing this trend forward. And newcomers to the Big Smoke Archive & Myth have even created an entire section of tiny tipples, including a five-layered Pousse Café, for guests to indulge in either as a solo amuse bouche, or as a sidecar to a beer or glass of bubbly. At Gen Yamamoto in Tokyo, the eight-seat bar offers an ever-changing tasting menu of tiny cocktails for its guests; and in New York City, the Snaquiri — a shot-sized Daiquiri born in 2010 as a bartender’s handshake — is alive and well. As more consumers crave flavour without the unnecessary overindulgence of many full-sized drinks; and as more people come to appreciate tiny cocktails as a cheaper way to taste more, expect to see more bars exploring the benefits of small format drinks in 2025 and beyond.

At Zapote Bar in Riviera Maya, Mexico, the bar showcases vibrant ingredients from the Yucatán in its cocktails, including the moreish Jaguar — a clarified milk punch flavoured with turmeric, banana, chocolate and pumpkin seed that is both unctuous and delicious.
Equal Parts in London has become known for its savoury delight dubbed the Flor — olive oil-washed vodka, fino sherry, tomato, garlic, basil and other spices — which tastes like biting into a well-seasoned tomato.
And with wide-reaching outlets like Forbes and Food & Wine amplifying the trend, putting it on the radar of the masses, imbibers can expect to see more of the Tomatini, various twists on the pickle-spiked Gibson and other savoury drinks at both high-end cocktail bars and chains alike.

As is the case with savoury cocktails, coffee-laced serves, such as Swift’s iconic Irish Coffee made with Jameson Caskmates Stout edition, aren’t only prevalent in the world’s best bars, though. They’ve also infiltrated sports bars, pubs and restaurants as well due to coffee being one of the more approachable cocktail ingredients because of its ubiquity. The classic coffee cocktail that made the rounds in 2024 on social media and online editorially was the inimitable Carajillo, a shaken mix of Licor 43 and espresso. We can expect that invigorating tipple and many other caffeinated beverages to go from strength to strength in 2025.

There’s no stopping the Martini and its infinite permutations. The Telegraph declared the iconic three-part cocktail as “the drink of 2024,” and while the claim wasn’t necessarily groundbreaking based on the global Martini obsession, it was certainly accurate. Unsurprisingly, the Espresso Martini and the classic Martini — whether it be pre-batched and frozen, or built a lá minute and served dry, wet or fifty-fifty — were the two iterations that drove the trend forward. But 2024 also saw a continued growth of savoury Martinis, Turf Club-style Martinis that get depth from sweeter modifiers, and the Dirty Martini, which has come back into vogue with contemporary flair.

At London’s Three Sheets, a bar renowned for its exceptional ability to produce top-notch ‘tinis, their take on the Dirty Martini, served specifically at the bar’s Soho location, has taken the British capital by storm. The cocktail blends olive oil-washed vodka with picpoul, korset tea and sea salt, making the twist as fresh as it is dirty, appealing to the spectrum of Martini lovers. On the savoury end of the spectrum, Gaucho’s Wagyu Martini washed with wagyu beef fat has started making waves across the UK as it’s served at each of the restaurants’ locations. And Dante Beverly Hills has paired trendy tequila with a citrus forward gin, sweet vermouth, Cocchi Americano and crème de cacao for a balanced, but sweet take on the Martini that is quickly becoming one of the most sought after in America, in part due to the bar’s pedigree.

First, it was the tongue-in-cheek Parmesan Espresso Martini that went viral on Tik Tok and Instagram, eventually being covered in the mainstream media. Then, in early 2024, twenty of the most followed drinks accounts on social media, such as @thelucasassis and @notjustabartender, decided to see if they could collectively start a global cocktail trend by posting about #BatangaWeek — a fake cocktail week they fabricated — on their individual accounts to gauge the power of social media influence. And the crazy thing is that it actually worked (the campaign reached over 1.5 million accounts).

Liquor stores in the U.S started promoting “Batanga Week” to peddle their tequilas; publicists started pitching the occasion to journalists, leading publications like Forbes to dub the Batanga “the drink of 2024”; and the whole initiative led to mayhem with cocktail enthusiasts around the world ordering the drink in bars and even posting their own takes on the tequila-based mixed drink.

That’s all to say, as influential as the world’s best bars and bartenders are, they won’t be the ones driving mass drink trends. If you’re looking for the next big cocktail trend of 2025, start following social media’s influential home bartenders.