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The world works in strange ways. The pandemic might have shut down businesses five years ago (it's already been that long?), but it also helped democratise the watch world. Perhaps the best example of it is Geneva Watch Days, the annual decentralised watchmaking event, coming back this September for its sixth edition.
Geneva Watch Days began in 2020, when eight brands (Breitling, Bulgari, De Bethune, Girard-Perregaux, H. Moser & Cie, MB&F, Ulysse Nardin and Urwerk) needed somewhere to show their watches after the pandemic shut down the usual trade fairs. Rather than book one hall and call it a day, they scattered themselves across Geneva's hotels and boutiques over a period of a week and invited the public in for free.
By 2025, the format had proven itself, drawing 66 brands, roughly 14,000 visitors and close to 1,900 industry professionals, retailers, collectors and media through Geneva. This year's 71 brands make 2026 the biggest edition yet, all set to display their watches from September 2nd to 6th across the city.
Central to the show is the Main Pavilion at the Rotonde du Mont-Blanc, right on the lake, alongside a new addition for 2026: the Blue Box, a curated exhibition of more than 130 watches grouped into four themes (Air, Earth, Fire and Water).
If Watches and Wonders is the big grand extravaganza of Horology, Geneva Watch Days is the underdog expo that asks you to take a break from the usual names and look at what's up and coming in the field. Unlike the former which has a permanent address at the Palexpo convention centre, the venue of Geneva Watch Days is the city itself: multiple hotels across the town, no ticket or exclusive passes like W&W, and anyone who's interested can just walk in from across the street.
All this is not to say that big maisons don't show up (Breitling, Bulgari, TAG Heuer and Zenith will be there this year), but the roster is mostly made up of names known to the most serious collectors: MB&F, Urwerk, De Bethune, Greubel Forsey, Konstantin Chaykin, Czapek. If your watch education runs deeper than the obvious four or five logos, this is the more interesting week on the calendar.
If you're already in Geneva, start at the Rotonde du Mont-Blanc. It’s the closest thing the event has to a front door, housing both the Main Pavilion and the Blue Box. From there, the show scatters across Satellite hubs at the Beau-Rivage, the Hotel d'Angleterre, the Mandarin Oriental Genève and the Hotel Eastwest, among others.
The Blue Box will run guided Watch in Hand sessions through the week, with industry expert Emmanuel Schneider hosting running commentary on standout pieces.
Thursday will include a panel on watchmakers versus movement constructors with a discussion on the nature of time featuring physicist Didier Queloz, among others. Also on the calendar are The CaliberShip Challenge, the Young Brands sessions and the GPHG's Next Gen Tribune.
Konstantin Chaykin has been making waves as one of the brands to watch out for this upcoming GPHG for the Thinking Mystery, a ridiculously thin 1.65 mm watch with the brand's signature anthropomorphic Joker design. Beyond dual exhibition spaces where you can see the watch, Chaykin himself is hosting a 15-people only interactive masterclass titled "From Animal to Watch Archetype" on September 2nd.
Also, continuing his annual philanthropic tradition, the brand has contributed a unique, one-of-a-kind piece to the official Geneva Watch Days charity auction, the proceeds from which are distributed to regional charitable causes.
Picture a British watch company older than the telephone finally building its first proper high complication, four years after the earliest sketches and 180 years after the company itself was founded. That is the Fears Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar, the Bristol brand's most complicated watch to date. It's a 39mm cushion-shaped steel case just 9.4mm thick, powered by a Dubois Dépraz module over a Sellita base that needs no correction until the year 2100, finished with a solid 18k gold rotor and a silver mink dial.
anOrdain has kept collectors waiting up to five years for its enamel dials, so this time, the Glasgow workshop swaps vitreous enamel for a hand-fired porcelain dial, glazed in-house and paired with a custom typeface designed by acclaimed type designer Kia Tasbihgou that draws on the lettering of 18th century Breguet pocket watches.
This is a collaboration between a fast-rising Chinese independent and one of New York's most tasteful watch collectors. Atelier Wen's Inflection, built almost entirely from 99.9 percent pure tantalum, gets a limited run of 50 pieces with solid 18k gold dials hand-finished using tremblage, a demanding decorative technique executed here by specialist engraver Coralie Mercier. The dial pairs custom Arabic numerals with hand-calligraphed Chinese characters, powered by a customised Girard-Perregaux GP03300 movement.
The Supernova line was unveiled earlier this year at Watches & Wonders, but Bremont returns to Geneva this week as a confirmed exhibitor.
Bremont arrives in Geneva Watch Days just before its space mission: its Supernova Chronograph, a 41mm steel and ceramic piece with a dial inspired by spacecraft solar panels, is scheduled to fly later this year aboard Astrolab's FLIP rover as part of Astrobotic's Griffin-1 lunar mission, where it will remain permanently on the Moon's surface (and will be the first British watch to do so).
Not unlike Watches and Wonders, some of the best watches at Geneva Watch Days will not be confirmed until the doors actually open. MB&F, Urwerk, De Bethune and Greubel Forsey, the four names most responsible for making Geneva Watch Days worth the trip in the first place, tend to save their biggest reveals for the show floor rather than the press releases that precede it. If history holds, at least one of them will produce the watch everyone in Geneva ends up talking about by midweek.