OPINION: Happy anniversary?
This year’s Watches and Wonders was accused by some of lacking risk or edginess in the product design department. There is a quiet consensus that a lot of major brands played it safe, rather than push the boat out. What the show certainly didn’t lack is anniversary celebrations for companies and specific models. Watch and jewelry writer Rachael Taylor investigates whether such celebrated milestones are a win-win for brands and collectors alike.
When researching for a previous Watch Insider article, I found myself asking retailers what they felt most excited about ahead of Watches and Wonders in Geneva. More than once, I was presented with a list, not of specific brands or models, but of anniversaries. From the centenary of the Rolex Oyster and 100 years of watchmaking at Tudor, to half a century of Patek Philippe’s Nautilus and TAG Heuer’s Monza, this year’s show was all about the milestones.
If I were to be a cynic, I would say that this influx of celebratory dates seemed to arrive magically in time for a year with little else going on; but of course, timelines are timelines — you can’t change them. It is perhaps the zeal with which these milestones were championed that caught my attention.
This year’s Watches and Wonders had a marked reduction in product launches compared with previous years, at least from a press perspective (and, admittedly, we care more for headline grabbers than subtle SKUs). Brand presentations that would usually drag on through tens of watches were instead focused on sometimes just two models. As one of my fellow journalists — a seasoned watch reporter — remarked at the end of one such condensed PowerPoint display in Geneva: “Is that it?”
This influx of celebratory dates seemed to arrive magically in time for a year with little else going on.”
This is not to say there was no excitement at the show, far from it, and what was released was well received by collectors. In terms of true newness, there was the beginning in earnest of the 21st century space race, with IWC unveiling its spaceflight-certified Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive, which has surely sounded the klaxon for all aviation watch brands to look a little higher, quite literally. Even though few of us actually need our watch dials to be legible in low light and the crown to be accessible to digits clothed in thick gloves when we step onto a British Airways flight, a new standard of expectation is dawning: our watches must now be technically ready for the moment we decide to hop on a VAST shuttle to break into low Earth orbit.
Aside from this new frontier, a lot of the buzz in Geneva was around reimaginings and reissuings. Cartier led the pack here, with the much-anticipated Roadster reboot, which is now back in the collection after a 12-year hiatus.
Raymond Weil took an innovative approach to celebrating its 50th anniversary with a line of watches called The Fifty. In a brilliant move that blended the brand’s history and contemporary successes, it created a modern dial — inspired by its Millesime Small Seconds, which won the 2023 GPHG Challenge Prize — but used original restored Valjoux Caliber 23-6 movements from 1976, the brand’s founding year, to power it. The collection sold out straight away.
The biggest of 2026’s watch anniversary celebrations is undoubtedly the Rolex Oyster centenary — 100 years of a horological icon. Rather than going loud with an explosion of diamonds, a solid gold model, or a radical new movement, Rolex kept it simple. The celebratory watch for such an enormous milestone was a beautifully stripped-back Oystersteel Oyster Perpetual 41 with a Rolesor gold bezel and slate-grey dial. To mark its purpose, ‘100 Years’ was engraved on the crown and printed in tiny characters at the base of the dial where you would usually find ‘Swiss made’. There was no talk of limited numbers, and the price for the watch is less than $10,000.
This launch is perfect for the current mood: it provides an unpretentious, familiar safe haven where our overwrought nervous systems can rest. While it might be easy to get distracted by so many birthday parties being thrown, this is surely a tough year for the industry — and humanity. There is caution in the air. Not the sort of “cautious optimism” we are so used to hearing roll off the tongues of luxury execs, but genuine pause. It is easy to effortlessly identify a culprit for this, because there are so many to choose from: the war in the Middle East, and its impact on the region’s luxury industry; the general global economic downturn and the rise of living costs; rising materials and manufacturing costs; the unsettling unpredictability of President Trump; a new generation less likely to mark success by what they wear on their wrist. Pick your poison.
Against such a backdrop, it is little wonder that watch brands are pumping the brakes on R&D, and on investing in brand-new collections that need expensive marketing drives to introduce them to consumers. But watch brands cannot be seen to stand still. Ever. The solution? Anniversaries.
Anniversary collections deliver what we all want in uncertain times — familiarity, nostalgia, comfort — while being a safer commercial bet for brands. This proffering of soothing retro solace was evident at Watches and Wonders, not just in the products but also the environments created around them. And rather than the usual 19th century black-and-white images of watchmakers at benches that prop up brand origin stories, this was a rear view of times that many of us in the halls had lived through or could easily visualize.
When done well these celebrations enable brands to remind their clients about everything that makes them great, without having to invent anything new.”
Patek Philippe transported passers-by back to the 1970s, the decade it first released the Nautilus, with groovy displays of orange carpets and geometric wallpaper. In a moment of kitsch perfection, its Nautilus 50th Anniversary 958G-001 pocket watch was displayed within a miniature wooden television set. Tudor and Alpina leaned into retro arcade games from the 1980s, while newcomer MarchLAB built a stand of dark wooden mid-century furniture and forest-green velvet that could have quite comfortably accommodated Don Draper for a whisky sour.
At Ulysse Nardin — which was celebrating 180 years of the brand and 25 years of its provocative Freak watch — we travelled back to the Millenium. Once you ran the gauntlet of its too-lifelike branded robot dancing and flirting outside the booth and slipped behind the huge loupe-strapped sculpture of Freak creator Dr. Ludwig Oechslin’s head, complete with terrifyingly thick eyebrow hairs, nostalgia awaited. An exhibition took visitors through the history of the brand and its most famous creation, including tripping back in time to the heyday of Baselworld, with grainy party pics of its very theatrical ‘Freak Show’ launch in 2001.
2026 might have been a slower year for product innovation, and it is easy to roll your eyes at yet another anniversary, but when done well these celebrations enable brands to remind their clients about everything that makes them great, without having to invent anything new. It is also a quiet reminder that these products and companies have been around for a long time, and have endured situations just as tough as the ones we face now, and have come through the other side every time. Heritage is an insurance policy: times might feel uncertain, but this is product you can trust in. Happy anniversary.
This article first appeared in the May 2026 edition of Watch Insider magazine.
