July 8, 2025 (Stockholm, Sweden) — Star Wine List, the celebrated international guide to great wine bars and restaurants, has announced the launch of its 2025/2026 Star Wine List of the Year awards tour, spanning Europe, Asia, the UAE, and North America. The competition celebrates the world’s most exceptional wine lists and the talented sommeliers who create them.
The new season, which begins this September, will feature significant updates to its award categories, designed to reflect the dynamic nature of the global wine scene even more so than before. Highlights include the introduction of a new recurring category for Best Italian Wine List.
“We always want to change up our categories a bit,” says Krister Bengtsson, Founder and Publisher of Star Wine List. “Best Italian Wine List is a huge category – there are some insane Italian selections on wine lists across the world and, by popular demand, we will be acknowledging those! This year, Italy gets the limelight, but there will be more soon.”
The 2025/2026 tour will kick off in Vilnius, Lithuania for the Baltic awards on 15 September 2025. For the first time, the wine lists of the Netherlands will be recognised with a live event, alongside their neighbours in Belgium, at Star Wine List of the Year Belgium & Netherlands on 29 September.
“We’ve had so many strong entries from the Netherlands to our International Open awards. We are very happy to add the Netherlands to our tour,” Bengtsson says.
The tour follows a highly successful 2024/2025 season, which saw the competition’s first events hosted in Tokyo, Barcelona and Miami, and culminated in an International Final in Vienna attended by global Gold Star winners from 21 different countries. “It was quite incredible to have people from as far away as Australia and several Asian countries join our International Final in Vienna in June,” reflects Bengtsson. “We just started Star Wine List eight years ago. I had to pinch myself a bit there.”
Star Wine List of the Year 2025/2026 tour schedule:
Autumn 2025:
The Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) – 15 September – entries now open!
Belgium and the Netherlands – 29 September – entries now open!
Norway – 12 October – entries now open!
Ireland (Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland) – 10 November
Denmark – 24 November
United Arab Emirates – 8 December
Spring 2026:
UK
Asia
Austria, Germany & Switzerland
Florida
France
International Open (for countries not covered by their own event)
Japan
New York
Spain
Sweden
About Star Wine List
Star Wine List is the award-winning guide to great wine bars and wine restaurants around the world. It is available as an app and at starwinelist.com. It was launched in Stockholm (Sweden) in 2017, and is now live in more than 45 countries. All venues are selected by top wine professionals. Star Wine List of the Year is an international competition celebrating the wonderful wine lists of the world and the dedicated sommelier teams who create them. Since its inception in 2018, this global tour has evolved to cover numerous territories, hosting events that recognise excellence in the wine and hospitality industries.