What’s new for Star Wine List of the Year 2025/2026?
Having just taken Vienna by storm, the Star Wine List team is gearing up for yet another season of wine list celebrations with dates starting to be announced for our next tour, spanning September 2025 to June 2026. Founder Krister Bengtsson reveals what’s in store, including new categories and enhanced sustainability criteria.
Star Wine List of the Year is our competition celebrating the wonderful wine lists of the world and, crucially, the people who create them. The first awards were held in Stockholm, in 2018, and the tour has evolved to cover many more territories since then. Last season, we hosted 18 events recognising sommelier teams across the world and, this September, we’ll hit the road again.
What’s new for 2025/2026?
• The Grand Prix category will be retired, to give the stage to other categories.
• The Special Jury Prize will become a recurring category with a twist, giving judges freer reign to reward a wine place doing something out of the ordinary, chosen from amongst all entrants.
• A new recurring category for the Best Italian Wine List.
• Our newly titled Sustainability Prize will require even greater information and detail to be submitted by sommelier teams.
• Juries will be provided with a revised judging framework (although the main idea remains the same as always: vote for the most exciting wine list in each category).
• Refreshed rules and regulations for entrants, for clarification.
Where are we heading for the next tour?
Autumn 2025:
• The Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) – 15 September 2025 – entries now open!
• Belgium and the Netherlands
• Denmark
• Ireland (Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland)
• Norway
• UAE
Spring 2026:
• Asia
• Austria, Germany & Switzerland
• Florida
• France
• Spain
• International Open (for countries not covered by their own event)
• Japan
• New York
• Sweden
• UK
Krister Bengtsson explains more...
What did you like most about the 2024-2025 tour? Any highlights?
“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. We just started Star Wine List eight years ago. I had to pinch myself a bit there.
“It was also special to do our first events in Tokyo, Barcelona and Miami. Lots of happy memories with the sommeliers and partners there.”
What's new for this season's tour?
“First of all, we are changing the categories a bit. We are retiring the Grand Prix and adding Best Italian Wine List. The Special Jury Prize will make even more appearances and reward wine bars and restaurants that go above and beyond their duty for wine lovers.”
Why make the changes?
“We always want to change up our categories a bit, and 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!
“As for the Grand Prix, we felt that it had become a bit superfluous on top of the other main categories. We think that Star Wine List of the Year is a bit like the Olympics, with plenty of disciplines, and not just one main prize like in the football World Cup… if the sports analogy holds.”
What's so special about Italian wine, to warrant its own category?
“In recent years this has become a big category in all types of restaurants and bars, not just Italian restaurants – and we've had a lot of sommeliers asking for a chance to showcase these wines. We like to change around the categories and highlight different types of wine, regions and countries; this year, Italy gets the limelight, but there will be more soon.”
When did you first introduce the award for sustainability and why? And how has the category evolved since then?
“The Sustainable Wine List award was introduced for the 2022/2023 tour. We wanted to highlight the complex issues surrounding it and encourage the teams making an effort. This year, we are adding more questions and analytics in this area.”
What changes are you making to the judging terms?
“The awards are judged by a rotating international panel of top sommeliers and wine experts, complemented by local experts. These experts have always had a very free mandate to vote for their favourite wine lists. This will continue, but we are adding a few framing criteria – and we are putting a few more rules in place for entries, just to make things clearer for everyone.”
How would you define the ethos of Star Wine List of the Year?
“First of all, it’s a celebration of great wine programs and the teams behind them: the sommeliers, the restaurateurs, the owners, the teams. We know that it has become quite prestigious to win an award but I am always happy when people are excited ‘just’ to be a finalist. It’s often so close between the top places – I feel that all finalists have accomplished great things.”
Any new stops on this next tour?
“We are going to Vilnius for the first time as part of our Baltics event, which starts the tour in September – I can't wait to celebrate with the teams there. The Baltic countries have not only won the top sommelier competitions in recent years with Raimonds Tomsons and Mikk Parre, but also have very dynamic wine and food scenes.
And somms in the Baltics — your awards are open for entries now!”
What are you looking forward to most about the coming season?
“Besides Lithuania, I very much look forward to our first event in the Netherlands – we will do a joint Belgium-Netherlands event at the end of September.
But before that I look forward to drinking a pastis and doing absolutely nothing for my holidays in France this summer!”
Keep an eye on the Star Wine List of the Year page for updates in each region.
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