Watches and Wonders, the world’s biggest and most important watch fair held annually in Geneva, has just wrapped for 2026. With it, a slew of novelties, new collections and stories that some of the greatest watchmaking brands in the world are introducing all the way through to 2027.
It’s a little like a super-condensed version of fashion week—though where fashion has two key seasons a year that takes place across four major cities, watchmakers convene once a year to present their new creations. It’s what makes the fair superb for spotting the trends and ideas that will dominate for the year to come. Vogue reports live from the action in Geneva, with six big ideas that are going to shape the watch trends of our times.
Simplicity is queen
The funny thing about haute horlogerie, or the field of high-end watchmaking, is that once you get past the one-upmanship of mind-boggling mechanical complexity it all does just boil down to who can make a simple thing best. A mechanical watch, after all, is famously not a necessity—so the pinnacle challenge is, in fact, designing something so beautiful it feels essential.
Some of the most compelling watches we saw this year were modestly sized, with functions limited to telling time (and perhaps a date), that were plainly masterful resolutions of design. Patek Philippe’s Calatrava, for instance, is the quintessence of a round, classic dress watch—and it updated its ladies’ collection this year with a beautiful new reference in white gold with a sand-beige dial and matching calfskin strap. The white gold case picks up on its golden details to take on a warm, radiant shine. It’s elegantly sized at 34.6mm, and is powered by an ultra-thin self-winding movement—a simple, effective and utterly beguiling combination of the best traits.
Cartier, which had as usual an extremely full lineup of novelties, had a highlight in the addition of the Tortue model to its mainline collection. First imagined in 1912, the Tortue was previously harder to get as an on-and-off model in the maison’s offerings. Now, its classic good looks are part of the permanent collection. The small model in yellow gold is sublime and close to perfect.
A broader reach
Something interesting is happening with regards to gender divisions in watches. Specifically, a dissolution and crossing of those lines, with watchmakers that have been usually regarded as either more masculine or feminine making a clear effort to woo the other side. Van Cleef & Arpels was one of the clearest examples. Famed as high jewellery maison whose oeuvre is outrightly feminine, this year it reframed its poetic complication watches in a more universal way. Well, since its Alhambra bracelets have started to captivate men too, why not watches too?
The dual time zone Midnight Heure d’ici & Heure d’ailleurs is romantic through and through—a lover in another city, perhaps, whose hour you keep close to you—but Van Cleef & Arpels designed it with a gorgeous embossed enamel dial with ruby-inspired shades of brown and red that shift in the light. Beautiful, masculine and feminine regardless, on any wrist.
Another outrightly feminine brand that is reaching out to men is Chanel. It carries on from the introduction last year of the matte ceramic J12 Bleu, which has evolved from a limited edition line to join the main collection this year. Perhaps most telling is the new J12 Superleggera, sized at 42mm in matte black ceramic. It puts a racing car-inspired twist on the collection’s aesthetic, with a satin-finished steel bezel and sporty red accents on the dial. The reverse of the feminine-masculine connections could also be seen at Bvlgari, which at last gave its famous super-thin Octo Finissimo a smaller size option with a new 37mm model.
Collect ’em all
Anniversaries are always a special occasion, and more pointedly a source of highly collectible designs. This year, the Swiss giant Rolex is marking 100 years of its famed Oyster case, which pioneered and mainstreamed the very idea of water-resistant watches. Two watches in particular mark the occasion exceptionally well. The first is an Oyster Perpetual 36 with a colourful, lacquered version of its lettered Jubilee dial—impossible to miss, and as graphic a marker of the occasion as it gets. The second might speak more to connoisseurs and detail lovers: the Oyster Perpetual 41 in two-tone Oystersteel and yellow gold, with subtle touches of Rolex green on the dial. It’s the sole Rolex watch introduced this year that replaces the signature ‘Swiss made’ on the dial with ‘100 years’, and even adds a ‘100’ on the crown.
One more icon celebrating a big anniversary: the 50th of Patek Philippe’s Nautilus. The Swiss brand is introducing a trio of limited edition Nautilus wristwatches that capture, with sublime finesse, why this watch has enchanted, often evaded, and yet continues to fascinate collectors. The one to go for is the 38mm model crafted in an ultra-thin platinum case (recalling medium-size models from the ’80s). Its combination of heft and slenderness, its perfection in polish and silhouette, is exemplary of why and how icons are forged.
Light the night
Watches with lume—the material that charges with light and glows in the dark, often applied to indexes so they’re visible at night—are nothing new. But this year, there was a renewed focus on bringing lume to new heights. The German haute horlogerie brand A. Lange & Söhne introduced a new Lange 1 Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar “Lumen” with a semi-transparent dial and so many lumed elements that the watch glows in the dark as if a mystical emerald deity were coming to the fore.
One other remarkable piece of innovation: IWC, which has combined ceramic with lume to create the new, proprietary Ceralume material. It’s debuting on a Big Pilot’s Watch Perpetual Calendar in all white: challenging to read in daylight, but which comes to life, the entire case and dial included, in the dark in gasp-worthy fashion.
The space race is on
Space, it turns out, really is the next frontier. As the conversation heats up on commercial space travel and the future of it all—we launched our own National Space Agency of Singapore just this April—watch brands, too, are looking up and above. The most exciting to break new ground this year was IWC, who designed their booth at the fair as a space ship. All to highlight and play up its new Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive, a timepiece designed, albeit with the foundations of an aviation watch, for life in space. The Schaffhausen brand partnered with Vast, a company that’s designing and constructing the world’s first commercial space station, to test and certify the watch for space flight and living. Imagine that!
Stoned!
Decorative hard stone dials reentered the mainstream last year, and it’s a trend that looks far from finished. What started out simple—malachite and lapis turning up on more and more watch dials—is becoming increasingly sophisticated and beautiful. Audemars Piguet has a winner this year in its new Établisseurs Galets bracelet watch, which pairs turquoise and tiger’s eye in a design inspired by pebbles in the Lac de Joux run smooth by flowing water. It comes from the watchmaker’s new Atelier des Établisseurs collection, which ropes in and celebrates the collaborative efforts of highly skilled artisans and craft specialists. Here, the Galets’s remarkable roundness and lack of virtually any straight, cornered edges, exemplify the savoir-faire of human hand crafts to emulate perfection wrought by nature.
Precious’s new paradigm
Since the cost of gold has soared and soared, watchmakers (and eventually, surely, jewellers too) have started to explore new territories of precious materials. One that’s coming to the fore is tantalum, a metal that’s rarer even and harder than gold and platinum. Tantalum is silver-coloured, with a cool, bluish, almost gunmetal hue to it—which makes for timepieces with a chilly, above-it-all look. H. Moser & Cie made the most of it in a new perpetual calendar from its Endeavour collection that is as subtle as it is commanding. Zenith, meanwhile, enriched its modern signature G.F.J with a new model cased in tantalum with a black onyx, mother-of-pearl and brick guilloché dial.
Other materials like ceramic and titanium, once considered newfangled ideas, have matured out of novelty. Appreciation and demand are growing for these modern materials. Chanel, of course, is a leader in ceramic—it crafted an incredible haute horlogerie chess set (Gabrielle, the Queen piece, is outfitted with a secret watch) for its Coco Game capsule collection as a sort of apogee piece of art to highlights its mastery of the material. A remarkable objet d’art, it was so quickly and soundly spoken for after it was created that it wasn’t even displayed at the fair.
The point, though, is that ceramic is fast becoming—nay, has become a material you’ll find offered by most luxury watch brands today. Chanel itself has fleshed out and expanded its core J12 line, with the notable introduction of a 28mm model that debuts the collection’s first rubber strap. Another great ceramic timepiece introduced this year is the sleek, cool Tudor Black Bay in all black on a bracelet, a more rugged-looking take on the metal alternative.
Titanium, meanwhile, is assuredly the metal of choice for sporty understatement that feels, because it is so extraordinarily light, like nothing on the wrist. Vacheron Constantin leaned into the globetrotting spirit of its Overseas collection to introduce a new quartet of Dual Time Cardinal Point watches. It comes in four dial colours, each one representing a cardinal direction, and visibly gives the Overseas line—which has so far had a smart, serious, zipped up look—a more chicly undone and even outdoorsy attitude.
One brand that has played surprisingly around old hat ideas of precious metals, though, is Bvlgari. The grand Roman jeweller is emphasising the combination of gold and steel this year. The two-tone idea is not new, but what Bvlgari has done is tweak how these metals are paired and used—small but meaningful shifts in design that heighten the decorative, jewel aspect of gold. Instead of simply gold bezels or alternating bracelet links, the maison has fashioned a design of gold pyramidal studs to dot and dress the slinky Tubogas bracelets of its Serpenti watches. These timepieces join the ranks of B.zero1 and Tubogas jewellery, introduced simultaneously, that are themselves crafted from yellow gold and stainless steel—creations that might presage a huge paradigm shift to come.
