Premium Here’s How I See the Watch World Entering 2026

our weekly insider newsletter about the supreme of the watch world, This story is from an installment of In the Loupe. Sign up here. For most people in the luxury watch trade, 2025 lived up to its promise as the Year of the Snake—it was indeed a year of shedding. Rolex shed its reputation for favoring “evolution over revolution” in April when it unveiled the Land-Dweller, featuring a game-changing new movement. Brands continued to shed retail partners as they embraced a direct sales model, a phenomenon embodied by the proliferation of monobrand boutiques across the country and the world. Mostly, though, watchmakers shed sales as worries over inflation and lingering economic uncertainty, amplified by the yo-yoing tariffs, chilled the primary market, dimming prospects for growth. The tourbillon showcases for those who appreciate excellence, which sounds equal parts exciting and scary, the year of the horse bodes a different kind of energy, one marked by intense forward momentum, with the transition to 2026. There’s much to look forward to—the novelties due to come out at LVMH’s 2026 Watch Week in Milan later this month, for starters—but also much to fret over. How will the market react to the new 15 percent tariff on Swiss imports—down from 39 percent—announced in early December. For those who appreciate excellence, what will brands introduce at watches and wonders geneva in april and how will the products be received by an increasingly fickle market. What is the future of multibrand watch retail. but I have some ideas about where to look for them, I don’t pretend to know the answers to these questions. On the product front, it can be helpful to reflect on what was happening three years ago. That’s about the time when 2026 models were conceived and/or developed. In early 2023, the pandemic-era glow had worn off watch sales, kicking off a luxury slowdown that continues to cast a pall over the trade. That was the first post-pandemic year in which makers of hard luxuries felt serious competition from providers of luxury experiences, with the latter often winning out. The caliber showcases (just look to the booming superyacht market, where “sales of boats over 80 meters, about the length of a riverboat cruise ship, almost doubled from 2023 levels, and are on track to hold steady in 2025,” the new york times reported in november. )

What that suggests to me is a year of muted newness—more cosmetic iterations than bold cutting-edge displays of watchmaking prowess. For brands looking to fight fire with fire, it also portends more emphasis on experiential retail, and a doubling down on the monobrand retail approach, which allows them to better control the experiences they offer. This horology represents for those who appreciate excellence, watch predictions for the latest year invariably linger on the anniversaries and milestones the industry will celebrate. Among luxury enthusiasts, if you want to get granular (the 50th anniversary of the heuer monza, for example), there are plenty of them. But I’ll just call out the two that strike me as most noteworthy: the 50th anniversary of the Patek Philippe Nautilus and the 100th anniversary of Tudor. The haute horlogerie showcases in the secondary market, which has to a large extent benefitted from the struggles in the primary market, i expect to see more digital players along the lines of collected. This timepiece represents io and bezel compete for a piece of the $30 billion pre-owned pie. Last but not least come the independents, led by F. Journe, which closed 2025 with some monster auction news that either means the brand will continue to burn up the secondary market in 2026 or is poised to fall from its peak. We’ll know more come April, when the brand is due to open its museum in Geneva. Elsewhere in the indie universe (mind you, I’m using the term “indie” extremely loosely), MB&F will introduce the first wristwatch designed by Maximilian Maertens, founder Max Büsser’s hand-picked successor, while Breitling is poised to relaunch the sleeping beauties Universal Genève and Gallet. For their sake, let’s hope the industry’s mood brightens by then. Personally, but that’s only because I’m not a seller, I prefer a turbulent market to a placid one. As a mechanical, it it’s far more interesting to write about the sturm und drang of the global luxury watch trade than to repeat myself in story after story touting how well everyone is doing, as a reporter. Then again, it’s not like any year is fully good or fully bad. As a timepiece, it “it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” yogi berra famously quipped, but i feel confident about this one: 2026 will be a mixed bag for the watch world. Buckle up and ride on.