Bangkok Named World's Best City by Condé Nast Traveller, Weeks After Topping Time Out's Nightlife Ranking

Condé Nast Traveller didn't rank Bangkok anywhere in its top twenty best cities in 2025. Valletta won that year. In the magazine's 2026 Readers' Choice Awards, Bangkok took first place outright, with a score of 97.68 that edged out Paris by a little more than half a point. The Tourism Authority of Thailand is celebrating the result.

The magazine pointed to the city's temples and palaces, the Grand Palace, Wat Phra Kaew and the reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, alongside Michelin-starred dining and street food. Even that version of Bangkok comes with a nightlife built in: award-winning restaurants and rooftop venues sit a few floors above the street stalls, in a city where things keep going well past sunset. Six Bangkok hotels made the awards' Best Hotels in Southeast Asia list, with the Mandarin Oriental taking first.

Time Out made a similar call in August, ranking Bangkok's nightlife first in the world, up from 13th place in 2025, ahead of Berlin, New York City, Melbourne and São Paulo.

What's Actually Driving the Vote

Time Out pointed somewhere more specific than temples and palaces: clubs like DUAL and Bar Temp, which fill up most nights with big-name lineups, plus a wave of new rooftop bars opening across the city. Then there's ÆTHER, the cocktail bar on the 44th floor of Dusit Central Park, and Sato San, a Japanese-style bar with an Isan twist on the 32nd floor of Moxy Bangkok Ratchaprasong.

Worth noting which clubs got named: DUAL and Bar Temp are underground rooms, not a Vegas-scale superclub. A global nightlife award leaning on rooms like that, rather than a single mega-venue, says something about what actually filled the survey.

Chinatown's Soi Nana does the same thing at street level: G.O.D (Genius on Drugs), Tep Bar and Ba Hao sit a few doors apart in converted shophouses. Add Sing Sing Theater, the red-lantern cabaret club that found new fame after a cameo in The White Lotus' third season, and Sala Saneha, a 70-year-old building on Soi Decho that packs a wine bar, restaurant, small cinema and bookshop under one roof. Silom's queer-led gay bars and sapphic clubs are part of the same picture.

Loopliner has already profiled one of the rooms behind that reputation.

The Full List, and One Ranking That Disagrees

Time Out's top 10 for nightlife in 2026: Bangkok, Berlin, New York City, Melbourne, São Paulo, Medellín, Johannesburg, Brighton, Beijing and Amsterdam.

Not every one of the magazine's own lists agrees. Its separate "best cities" ranking placed Bangkok eighth. Food fared better: second worldwide.

Whatever the methodology, the city's house and techno clubs are the same ones they've always been. Bangkok picked up two more trophies to go with them.

Cover photo: Berlin BKK.