Across a range of countries, pubs and cognate drinking venues are shrinking in number and being reimagined in function. This paper examines the contemporary “pub crisis” in Ireland, Britain, Hungary, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands and Australia, drawing on academic, policy, media and industry materials gathered during late 2025 and early 2026. It argues that, despite different national histories and drinking cultures, similar pressures recur: rising costs, labour shortages, changing alcohol consumption, weakened after-work drinking norms, and redevelopment pressures, with rural and peripheral areas often most exposed. The paper treats pubs not simply as licensed businesses, but as contested forms of social infrastructure and third space. Their decline has implications for community cohesion, loneliness, local identity and civic life. The paper also surveys emerging responses, from deregulation and fiscal relief to heritage protection and community buyouts, asking how adaptation can occur without eroding the social role that made pubs matter in the first place.