Campari One To Watch Award 2026
Art
Katowice
A love letter to Poland’s creative community
Poland's industrial heartland might not be where you'd expect to encounter one of Europe's most exciting new bar prospects, but Art has caused quite the splash since it opened in 2024. Masterminded by local hospitality veterans Monika Kaźmierczak and Krzysztof Ciemiera, this boundary-pushing venue is a living, breathing collaborative hub that places cutting-edge cocktail creation at a crossroad with fine art.
The bar's striking, gallery-like interior has been crafted as a love letter to its community, with walls that serve as a rotating exhibition space for Polish creatives, and pieces donated by Katowice artists the core focus. Elsewhere in the room, the chic booths are upholstered entirely in upcycled denim gathered via a crowdsourced social media campaign – a clever nod to the bar's sustainable ethos.
The venue's core philosophy of breaking down the barriers of traditional hospitality spaces is best exemplified by its revolutionary central bar station. Engineered as a completely open, barrier-free island, it eliminates the physical wall between bartender and guest and encourages an organic verbal to-and-fro one would expect of a dinner party with close friends.
Behind this interactive stage lies the Art Lab, a back-of-house laboratory where Ciemiera and his team design conceptual menus. Rather than organising drinks by traditional flavour profiles, drinks lean into artistic disciplines for inspiration, translating the textures and aesthetics of tattoo artistry, photography, fashion and architecture into liquid formats. Reimaigining the Pop Art movement of the 1950s and 60s, the bar looked to the bright colours of Chupa Chups lollipops and masterfully adapted them into a concoction of gin, Italian bitter aperitif and rum that hums with nostalgic strawberry and cream flavour.
For its radical mixing of mixology and culture, Art is named winner of the Campari One To Watch Award 2026 as part of the inaugural edition of Europe's 50 Best Bars.
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