Melbourne is the most expensive city in the world for a beer

A 500ml bottle of domestic beer costs more in Melbourne than in any other city on earth.

Deutsche Bank Research Institute’s Mapping the World’s Prices 2026, published on 13 July, puts Melbourne first on its domestic beer table at US$5.27.

Sydney is second at US$4.10. New York, the report’s baseline, is third at US$3.21.

Melbourne sits at 164 per cent of the New York price — which makes a beer here 64 per cent dearer, not 164 per cent dearer, a distinction some reports of the figure have lost.

Melbourne has climbed one place since last year and three since 2016. The price is up 26.1 per cent over the decade.

The report also runs what it calls the Oasis index, named for the band and the 1994 single Cigarettes & Alcohol. It prices five 500ml domestic beers and two 20-packs of cigarettes.

Melbourne tops that one too, at US$111.20, with Sydney second at US$109.50. Auckland and Wellington are third and fourth. London is fifth at US$63.90.

Melbourne’s Oasis basket has risen 89 per cent in 10 years. Shanghai, the cheapest city in the index, comes in at US$10.40.

The report does not hedge on why. Australia is at the top, it says, because of the country’s “relentless application of sin taxes”.

Here is the part that matters for the bottle Deutsche Bank actually priced.

The Federal Government froze draught beer excise for two years from 4 August 2025 — a cost-of-living measure that cancels four indexation rises through to February 2027.

It does not apply to packaged beer. Bottles and cans keep indexing twice a year, every February and August, in line with the consumer price index.

Full-strength draught beer is taxed at $43.39 per litre of alcohol. The same beer in a bottle is taxed at $63.75.

The freeze protects the schooner at the pub. The bottle in the fridge was left where it was, and it goes up again next month.

Melbourne did not reach the top of that table by accident. It got there by policy, and the policy on the bottle has not changed.