From September 21–27, Barcelona’s top hotels team up with global bartenders, spirits brands, and a women-in-hospitality initiative to prove the hotel bar deserves its own spotlight — Jetset Times sat down with founder Bianca Grisolia to find out what’s new for year two.
FACEBOOK Barcelona Hotel Bar WeekBarcelona’s cocktail scene has quietly become one of Europe’s most exciting — and starting September 21, it’s about to get a dedicated stage of its own. Barcelona Hotel Bar Week (BHBW) returns for its second edition, running through the last week of September 2026 and bringing together hotel bars, global spirits brands, and top mixologists across the city for a week of guest shifts, tastings, panels, and parties.
Ahead of the event, Jetset Times spoke with Bianca Grisolia, founder and creative director behind BHBW, about what’s changed since its 2025 debut, and why Barcelona’s hotel bars have spent too long playing second fiddle to the city’s freestanding cocktail bars.
What Is Barcelona Hotel Bar Week?
Launched in 2025, Barcelona Hotel Bar Week is built around a simple observation: while cities like London, New York, and major Asian capitals treat the hotel bar as a genuine nightlife destination, Barcelona has historically treated it as an afterthought. Grisolia explains:
“I just saw none focusing on the hospitality that hotels and their services can give. Here in Barcelona, we’re still seen as just an accessory, so we wanted to change that.”
That shift is already paying off behind the scenes. According to Grisolia, hotels have started investing more seriously in their bar programs — training staff, building out cocktail identities, and treating the bar as a core part of the guest experience rather than a lobby afterthought. It’s also, she points out, a smart financial move: the hotel bar typically carries the highest profit margin of any department in the building.
Majestic Hotel & Spa Barcelona – El Bar del Majestic. PHOTO FEDRA BRONDOWhat’s On The Calendar This Year
This year’s edition runs alongside Barcelona’s Mercè festival, the city’s biggest annual celebration, giving visitors extra reason to build a trip around it. A few highlights to know before you go:
Week At A Glance
- A custom cocktail list at every hotel — each participating bar built a dedicated list for the week, with at least one signature cocktail and one low-ABV or non-alcoholic option, reflecting the wider shift toward mindful drinking.
- A women-in-hospitality dinner — a Thursday, September 24 networking dinner run in partnership with London-based collective Celebrate Her, founded by Anna Sebastian, alongside women-led guest shifts throughout the week.
- Global brand takeovers — including Tequila Ocho, Elijah Craig, and the Barcelona launch of Bolivian spirit Singani 63.
- Bilingual programming — talks and seminars run in both English and Spanish, split between industry training and public-facing events.
Hesperia Barri Gòtic – The Circle. PHOTO FEDRA BRONDOCelebrating Women In Hospitality
One of the biggest additions to this year’s program is a dedicated focus on women in the industry, built in partnership with Celebrate Her, the global hospitality collective founded by London-based Anna Sebastian. Grisolia says,
“This is a collaboration with a friend, Anna Sebastian from London, that founded Celebrate Her — a global community to empower women in hospitality, touching many points. From the workload, general rights, to helping people find work around the world.”
The centerpiece is a networking dinner for women working across bars, restaurants, and hotels citywide, alongside a series of women-led guest shifts featuring bartenders based in Barcelona and flying in from abroad.
For Grisolia, the initiative is less about a single event than about long-term community building.
“The idea, from Barcelona Hotel Bar Week to this dinner to the events in general, is to connect people that can know each other, support each other, and then grow together. Because I’m a strong believer that if we grow together, we grow more than working individually.”
The Rise Of The Mocktail
BHBW is also leaning into one of the biggest shifts in global drinking culture: the move toward low- and no-alcohol cocktails. Every hotel taking part in the week was given a firm brief for its custom cocktail list. Grisolia remarks,
“The guideline is that it needs to be at least two cocktails, of which one is a signature cocktail, and one is a low-ABV or non-alcoholic cocktail — so at least one of those recipes will be present at each hotel for the whole week.”
The push reflects a broader wellness-driven trend reshaping bars worldwide, as more drinkers look to cut back on alcohol without giving up the ritual and atmosphere of a night out at a bar. By making a non-alcoholic option a mandatory part of every menu rather than an afterthought, BHBW is effectively asking Barcelona’s hotel bars to treat mocktails with the same craft and intention as their boozier counterparts — matching the seasonal ingredients, layered flavor-building, and presentation of a signature cocktail.
Almanac Barcelona – Azimuth Rooftop Bar. PHOTO FEDRA BRONDOWhy Barcelona’s Cocktail Scene Punches Above Its Weight
Grisolia credits Barcelona’s pull as an international crossroads for the strength of its scene.
“Barcelona is a city where, more or less, everyone, sooner or later, will pass by,” she notes.
Highlighting to the mix of local Catalan tradition with waves of international talent and investment as the engine behind the city’s cocktail boom over the last five to six years. She also traces some of that creative energy back to Barcelona’s legacy of boundary-pushing gastronomy — including the influence of the Adrià brothers and the elBulli generation — which she says continues to shape a growing collaboration between chefs and bartenders across the city’s restaurant and bar scenes.
When And Where
Barcelona Hotel Bars Week runs September 21–27, 2026, with events hosted across participating hotel bars throughout the city, including SLS Barcelona, W Barcelona (Knox), Nobu Barcelona, Mandarin Oriental Barcelona and Hotel Hesperia Barcelona Barri Gòtic. A detailed events schedule and hotel list is available directly through BHBW.
