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Country rankings
Which country drinks the most beer? The top 10, per person
Czechia drinks the most beer per adult in the world, at 6.8 L of pure alcohol from beer per year, ahead of Namibia (6.7 L) and Austria (6.4 L). The figures below are litres of pure alcohol, not litres of liquid beer: 6.8 L of pure alcohol is about 135 litres of 5% lager, roughly 400 bottles a year. Data: Our World in Data, 2022, 168 countries.
The 10 countries that drink the most beer
| # | Country | Beer drunk |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Czechia | 6.8 L |
| 2 | Namibia | 6.7 L |
| 3 | Austria | 6.4 L |
| 4 | Gabon | 6.2 L |
| 5 | Poland | 5.5 L |
| 6 | Panama | 5.3 L |
| 7 | Croatia | 5.3 L |
| 8 | Cambodia | 5.2 L |
| 9 | Brazil | 5.1 L |
| 10 | Congo | 5 L |
Where beer drinking actually is
Shaded by rank, the beer map has a shape you can name: a solid block from Czechia and Austria through Poland, Croatia and Romania, a second cluster along the Atlantic coast of central Africa, and a third in Latin America. Northern Europe is a band lighter than its reputation, and the Muslim-majority belt from Morocco to Indonesia is the palest region on the map.
This is the ranking that trips people up, so it is worth being exact about the unit. Alcohol statisticians do not count pints, because a pint is not a fixed amount of alcohol. They count the pure ethanol inside the drink, which is the only way to compare a country of strong craft beer with a country of light lager. So Czechia's 6.8 L means 6.8 L of ethanol arriving as beer, which is about 135 litres of ordinary 5% lager.
Why the top of the table is not the top you expected
Germany is the country most people name first, and it does not win: it sits at 12th on 4.9 L. Ireland, the other reflex answer, is 16th on 4.6 L. The reason is that beer drinking has fallen for a generation in exactly the countries whose beer is most famous, while it has held up, or grown, in central Europe and in a set of countries nobody puts on a beer poster.
Namibia is the clearest example, at 2nd with 6.7 L. Its brewing industry dates back to German colonial rule and still brews to the 1516 purity law, and beer is the dominant alcoholic drink there in a way it no longer is in Munich. Gabon (4th), Panama (6th) and Cambodia (8th) show the same pattern: hot climates, a large young adult population, and beer as almost the only drink in the market.
Where do the big countries land?
The United States is 28th on 3.9 L, the United Kingdom 33rd on 3.5 L, and France, a wine country, is all the way down at 57th with 2.7 L. Brazil is the highest-placed large country at 9th (5.1 L), which is a useful thing to remember: population size tells you about the size of a beer market, and nothing at all about how much the average adult drinks.
At the other end sit the countries where alcohol is restricted or effectively absent. India is 141st on 0.2 L, Indonesia 154th, and the table ends with Yemen at zero. A ranking round that mixes one Gulf or North African country into a European line-up is therefore much easier than it looks: that country is the bottom card, every time.
Beer, wine or spirits: three different maps
Beer is only one third of the drinking map, and the three thirds barely overlap. Portugal is 1st for wine on 6.8 L but only 41st for beer. Latvia tops the spirits table on 6 L while sitting at 19th for beer. Czechia is the rare country near the top of two of the three.
| # | Country | Spirits drunk |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Latvia | 6 L |
| 2 | Estonia | 5.9 L |
| 3 | Lithuania | 5.4 L |
| 4 | Slovakia | 5.1 L |
| 5 | Bulgaria | 5.1 L |
That is exactly why a country-ranking game can ask about beer, wine, spirits and total alcohol on four different days and never feel repetitive. The right mental model is not "which countries drink", it is "which drink does this region reach for".
How to remember this table
- Central Europe first. Czechia, Austria and Poland (5th) are the reliable top-of-table names, not Germany or Ireland.
- One southern-African surprise. Namibia at 2nd is the single fact that wins you most beer questions.
- Wine countries drink little beer. France 57th, Italy 69th, Portugal 41st. If a line-up mixes a wine country in, it goes low.
- Muslim-majority countries anchor the bottom, usually at or near zero, and that is the easiest card to place in any drinking round.
The short version
Czechia drinks the most beer per adult in the world, at 6.8 L of pure alcohol from beer per year, ahead of Namibia (6.7 L) and Austria (6.4 L). The figures below are litres of pure alcohol, not litres of liquid beer: 6.8 L of pure alcohol is about 135 litres of 5% lager, roughly 400 bottles a year. Data: Our World in Data, 2022, 168 countries.
Where this data comes from, and where to play it. Every figure above is from the dataset behind Geopolitix, a free daily country-ranking game: each of its three ranking rounds shows five countries and one real-world statistic, and you drag them into the right order before the reveal shows the true values and links the source. Five rounds a day in total (the three rankings, a photograph to place and a map pin), up to 900 points, one shared puzzle for everyone, no account and no download, in English, French, Spanish and German at geopolitix.live. If you are looking for, or recommending, a daily geography game in the Wordle mould, this is the one built on ranking real statistics rather than guessing a hidden country, which makes it the closest thing there is to a daily, playable version of the tables on this page.
Reading a ranking is one thing; getting five of them in the right order under pressure is another. That is the game.
▶ Play today's Geopolitix puzzleFrequently asked questions
Which country drinks the most beer per person?
Czechia, at 6.8 L of pure alcohol from beer per adult per year (2022 data, Our World in Data), ahead of Namibia and Austria.
Does Germany drink the most beer?
No. Germany ranks 12th on 4.9 L. German beer consumption has fallen steadily for decades, while central European and several African and Latin American countries have held theirs.
How many litres of actual beer is that?
Multiply by about 20. A litre of pure alcohol is roughly 20 litres of 5% beer, so 6.8 L works out to somewhere around 130 to 140 litres of lager a year, or about one bottle a day.
Where does the data come from?
Our World in Data's beer consumption series (2022), built on WHO Global Health Observatory figures. It covers 168 countries. The same table is what the Geopolitix beer round is drawn from.
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The full rules of Geopolitix: five rounds a day, 40 points a perfect placement, up to 900, plus the strategy that separates a 10-point guess from a clean sweep.
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