Watches & Jewellery / Watches
IWC's Big Pilot Goes Luminous Ceramic
A genuinely unusual case material choice made IWC one of the fair's talking points.
IWC's Big Pilot has always traded on scale and legibility, but the version it brought to Watches and Wonders 2026 pushed further: a luminous ceramic case, a material combination specialist coverage described outright as 'genuinely wild'.
Ceramic cases aren't new, and neither is luminescent coating on dials — but building the glow into the case material itself is a different engineering problem, and one that puts IWC's newest Big Pilot squarely among the fair's more talked-about technical statements, even in a year crowded with fiftieth and hundredth anniversaries.
About the author
Jing Yi Tan
Fashion editor and writer covering design, image-making and the creative networks connecting Southeast Asia.
