Watches & Jewellery / Watches
Watches and Wonders 2026: The Complete Recap
A show obsessed with its own history delivered anniversary pieces, skeleton dials and a handful of genuine surprises.
If there was a single question hanging over Geneva this year, it was: haven't we seen this before?
Watches and Wonders 2026 leaned hard into heritage, with Rolex marking a century of the Oyster case, Patek Philippe celebrating fifty years of the Nautilus, and Vacheron Constantin toasting thirty years of the Overseas. But nostalgia shared the floor with real engineering: invisible chronographs, skeletonised movements and celestial complications from Patek Philippe pushed modern watchmaking forward even as the marketing leaned backward.
Audemars Piguet returned to the fair after seven years away, TAG Heuer reinvented the Monaco around a new carbon-spring oscillator, and Tudor unveiled its centenary Monarch. Industry watchers called it a year of consolidation rather than revolution which, for an industry this size, is still a great deal of watchmaking.
About the author
Yuna Liu
Fashion editor and writer covering design, image-making and the creative networks connecting Southeast Asia.
