How to say cheers in Spanish
17 October 2026
Salud is the word, and you could stop there. But Spanish has a word for the toast itself with a stranger history than the toast, a longer call for when the whole table is in, and a rule about water that people in Spain take surprisingly seriously.
The short answer: ¡Salud!
Health. Say it sah-LOOD, and in much of Spain the final d softens to something like the th in "the", until it nearly disappears. It is also what you say when somebody sneezes, so you will hear it in the bar and on the bus.
Saying it to someone
Salud on its own is for the table. To aim it at a person, Spanish lets you choose how formal to be: a tu salud to a friend, a su salud to somebody you would call usted, and in Spain a vuestra salud to a group of friends.
Chinchín
The sound of the glasses, and in Spain it is said as often as salud. It is the same sound as Italy's cin cin and France's tchin-tchin, which came back from Guangzhou with Europeans who had heard qing qing.
Brindis — the toast with a German past
A toast is un brindis, and to make one is brindar. The word reached Spanish through Italian brindisi, from the German bring dir's: I bring it to you.
For the whole table
Salud, dinero y amor — health, money and love — and the people who know it add y tiempo para disfrutarlos: and the time to enjoy them. For a round of shots there is arriba, abajo, al centro y pa' dentro: glasses up, down, to the middle, and in. And if the plan is to finish the glass, ¡hasta el fondo!, all the way to the bottom.
Never with water
In Spain, toasting with water is said to bring bad luck, and some will tell you it wishes the bad luck on the person you are toasting. If you are not drinking, raise whatever is in your glass and nobody will mind. If it is water, expect somebody to top it up with something else first.
Look them in the eye
As in Germany and France, you meet the other person's eyes as the glasses touch. Looking at the glass instead is the classic tell of somebody who has not been told.
Spain has more than one word
Spanish is one of four languages in Spain, and each has its own: salut in Catalan, topa in Basque, saúde in Galician. In Barcelona you will hear salut as often as salud, and in Bilbao topa goes down better than either.
Say it from wherever you are
Every group of friends ends up with its own word, and ours was cheersuu. Cheersuu is an app for saying cheers to friends and family who aren't with you: take a photo of your drink, and it becomes a postcard with where you are, what you're drinking, and the date and time. One tap and they say Cheersuu back, or they can answer with a drink of their own.