Inside World Class 2026 - The World’s Best Bartending Competition Comes To Gurgaon

When it comes to cocktails, there’s no event in India that does innovation quite like World Class. The air inside Le Méridien, Gurgaon crackled with anticipation as the 12th edition of Diageo's World Class finals kicked off…and for good reason. For the first time, representatives from India, Nepal and Sri Lanka came together on a single platform, drawing from over 800 entries to produce 21 of the subcontinent's finest bartenders. Two days of extraordinary competition, immersive brand experiences and late-night energy awaited. What followed was nothing short of a landmark moment for cocktail culture.

The Top 8 Showcase India’s Cocktail Diversity

While a meeting point for all sorts of celebrations, World Class is first and foremost, a competition, and the finalists this year shaped a new narrative in the world of mixology. Each of the top 8 hailed from a different city in India, and most outside the cookie cutter metros people have come to associate with world class mixology.

The winner, Karan Dhanelia (Atelier V, Indore) brought Indore - a city celebrated for its food, now firmly on the cocktail map with audacious flavour combinations and an unruffled composure. Siddhesh Palande (The Bombay Canteen, Mumbai) finished second, representing Mumbai's sophisticated bar scene with the polish and precision the city is known for. Gracy Chourey (SOKA, Bengaluru) rounded out the top three, her presence part of a landmark moment for the competition: this year saw the highest-ever female representation in the Top 8, with three women finalists.

Chitra M (NOVY, Gurgaon) brought home energy to the local crowd, competing on her own turf with confidence. Rajneesh Barthwal (No Vacancy, New Delhi) was one of the standout all-rounders of the competition, winning both the Quiz Round and the Digital Galeria Don Julio 1942 challenge. Dishant Kanojia (1932 Trevi, Jaipur) represented another Tier 2 city making its mark, arriving with the quiet assurance of someone who had nothing to prove and everything to gain. 

Dheeraj Bhatt (Quinta Cantina, Goa) brought a coastal creativity to his serves, sharing the Don Julio 1942 challenge win with Barthwal. Sarbani Mukherjee (Conversation Room, Kolkata) completed an eight that felt genuinely representative - of cities, of backgrounds, of a cocktail scene that has grown far beyond its metropolitan origins.

Day 1: Creative Challenges

The judging panel -  a formidable international lineup including David Rios, Tim Philips, Konstantinos Mourloukos and Jenna Ba, joined by India’s own celebrated restaurateur-bartender duo Yangdup Lama and Minakshi Singh presided over the competition and had the tough job of whittling down the competition. 

The Day 1 challenges were designed to push bartenders into genuinely unfamiliar territory -  asking them not just to mix drinks, but to think in entirely new ways. The Singleton 12 Sensory Sessions set the tone early. Competitors were asked to translate music into flavour. It’s  a concept that sounds abstract until you watch a bartender begin reaching for ingredients and composing them into a flavour.  

The Digital Galeria Don Julio 1942 challenge brought a different kind of pressure. Here, bartenders drew inspiration from art to create visually and conceptually striking serves - drinks that needed to hold their own as objects of beauty before they were ever tasted. The presentations were vivid, theatrical and, at their best, genuinely moving. One standout moment came from Karan Dhanelia from Atelier V in Indore who produced a drink featuring onion soda and spirulina syrup that left the judging panel (and frankly everyone else in the room) pleasantly surprised. It was the kind of flavour combination that should not work, and absolutely did.

Day 2: Speed And Precision Rounds 

If Day 1 was about imagination, Day 2 was about nerve. The Speed Round is where competitions are won and lost in real time, and the atmosphere shifted accordingly. Gone was the contemplative quiet of the creative challenges, in its place, a sharp, kinetic energy filled the space as the Top 8 took to their stations. Every pour was watched, every garnish clocked. The crowd leaned in.

Precision, composure and a thorough command of the classics were what separated the finalists here. Karan Dhanelia, already impressive on Day 1, delivered again - his deep understanding of classic technique giving him the edge when everything else had to be stripped away. He won the Speed Round outright, and with it, the momentum that would carry him to the top.

The Brand Bars and Experience Zones

Beyond the competition floor, the World Class Cocktail Festival transformed Le Méridien into something closer to a full sensory celebration. Built around the philosophy of Sip, Savour and Celebrate, the festival sprawled across three distinct zones, each with its own character and pace.

Don Julio, Johnnie Walker, Tanqueray and The Singleton anchored the brand activations, each presented through serves that were fun, inventive and clearly conceived with the festival-goer in mind rather than the purist. There was theatre here - the kind that makes you want to linger at a bar rather than simply order and move on. Whether it was showcasing Don Julio’s vibrant Mexican roots or Johnniw Walker’s Irish roots, the drama made it clear you were about to step into another world. 

In the savour section, guests were invited to try familiar spirits in new and exciting avatars. Froma whisky based Espresso Martini cocktail with Johnnie Walker to a Tanqueray based licorice Martini that emphasised its herbaceous nature, each sip was designed to make you think outside the box.

The Johnnie Walker Blue Label Rare Access experience was another inventive addition where two past alumni of World Class wins, Navjyot Singh - founder of Delhi’s popular ‘Lair’ - along with Johnnie Walker Global Ambassador, Tim D Philips took groups through the potential of bringing out whisky’s innate nature through aroma and a specialised cocktail.

Personalised touches across the event kept the atmosphere warm rather than corporate, charm stations and customisable T-shirt booths gave guests something to take home beyond memories, turning the evening into something genuinely participatory.

Bar Takeovers 

One of the quietly brilliant touches of this year's festival was the involvement of the international judging panel not just in evaluation, but in creation. The Bar in Front of The Bar, the acclaimed Athens-based bar led by Konstantinos Mourloukos, staged a takeover of the Don Julio bar with cocktails like a Taco Margarita and a Greek Herbs Mule, that gave the evening a distinctly global dimension - a reminder that what happens in Indore or Goa or Kolkata sits within a worldwide conversation about where the craft of bartending is headed.

Over at The Singleton bar, David Rios showcased his passion for performance as he innovated with whisky cocktails that highlighted delicious discoveries such as the chocolate forward Take Me On and the bright One Right Now which brought flavours of Kaffir Lime and Timur Berries. Rios enthusiastically showcased all of his talent behind the bar, proving that bartending is as much a matter of art as it is science. 

Over at the Tanqueray bar, Jenna Ba was mixing up some progressive sips that gave gin a new playground. From the Hot Honey with lemon and apple cider to offset the swicy honey heat to a Negroni Shakerato which showcased a new take on a classic with fresh mandarin citrus twist there was plenty for the events many gin fans to sample. 

For attendees, watching the judges behind the bar - rather than seated at the panel - offered a rare and genuinely illuminating perspective. These were not commentators. They were practitioners, and the drinks they produced showed exactly why they had been asked to judge in the first place.

A World Class Affair

To attend World Class 2026 was to witness a competition that has grown into something significantly larger than its constituent parts. What began as a search for the best bartender in the country has become, over twelve editions, a genuine barometer of where Indian cocktail culture is -  and a forceful argument for where it is going.

The emergence of Tier 2 cities in the Top 8 was not a novelty or a quirk of this particular year's draw. It felt like the natural consequence of a platform that has spent years nurturing talent across the country, in cities that have their own food histories, their own palates and their own ideas about what a great drink should be. Indore producing a world-class champion is not a surprise - it is, in retrospect, inevitable. The final evening, with performances from Sage, Novna x Avisha and Reyhaa building into a headline set from Nucleya, felt like a fitting punctuation mark: loud, celebratory and entirely certain of itself. Much like the competition it was closing out.

For those who experienced it, World Class 2026 left behind the specific, lasting impression that something has shifted,  that the story of Indian bartending has a new chapter, and it is being written in places that were not on anyone's map until now.

*Drink Responsibly. This communication is for audiences above the age of 25.