Notes from the Magic Mountain
Barry's Piano Bar: Davos's Actual Late-Night Institution
The real story behind the piano man everyone in Davos knows — Hotel Europe, the move down the road, and why he's still the one constant on the Promenade after midnight.
Last updated: August 2026
Photo — A late-night piano bar crowd during Davos Annual Meeting week
The pianist everyone in Davos knows
- Barry Colson is a piano player from Halifax, Canada, and for about 25 years he was the musician-in-residence at the bar upstairs at Hotel Europe during Annual Meeting week — CEOs, delegates and the odd rock star singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocket Man and Summer of '69 at a piano in a hotel bar, most nights of the week.
Why he's 450 metres down the road now
- His contract at Hotel Europe wasn't renewed for the 2020 Annual Meeting. Around the same time, Cloudflare co-founder Matthew Prince — who'd met his wife at one of Barry's earlier gigs — backed a new venue about 450 metres from the old spot: Barry's Piano Bar, sponsored by Cloudflare. The exact reasons for the change were never fully public; what's clear is Barry kept playing, just somewhere else.
What it's become
- It's now one of the more talked-about late-night fixtures of the week, and Barry's still the one at the piano. Some Davos venues need a hotel badge or a WEF badge to get in and some don't — we cover how that system actually works on our badges & access page rather than guessing venue by venue here.
- If you're mapping out your late nights for next year, that's the boring practical part we can actually help with — walking routes on the Promenade and how the badge system works, not which piano bar to hit.
Got a specific question?
Twelve years of doing this means we've usually seen your exact situation before. Ask directly — no template reply.