On the evening of 7 November, 84 watches will share one stage at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. By the time the audience disperses, one of them will carry the Aiguille d’Or — the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève’s highest honour. Six days out, the field has never looked this wide open.
The Rulebook Has Changed
The organisers have rewritten the competition for 2026, and the most significant change is the one that made headlines last week. The traditional Men’s and Ladies’ categories are gone. In their place sit two new designations: Essential Watch (for modern takes on clean, purpose-built timekeeping) and Complication Watch (for pieces where mechanical complexity takes centre stage). The GPHG says the move reflects “changing purchasing behaviours” and aligns the competition with how the industry itself has moved away from gendering its products.
A new Gemset category has also been added — for watches set with up to six carats of stones — while the existing Jewellery category is now reserved for the most precious pieces. The Iconic Watch Prize, open to any contemporary reinterpretation of a model with at least 20 years of industry influence, is competing for the first time. Nineteen prizes will be handed out across 14 categories and 84 nominated pieces.
The jury itself has changed hands. Wei Koh — founder of Revolution and The Rake, and one of the most vocal advocates for independent watchmaking — succeeds Nick Foulkes as president. Alongside him sit 24 members including Tiffany To of Phillips, Michael Tay of The Hour Glass, and Gregory Kissling of Breguet (whose company won the 2025 Aiguille d’Or, earning them a jury seat this year while being barred from competing). The jury carries two-thirds of the result; the GPHG Academy’s 1,050 members provide the remaining third, via digital ballot.
Who Isn’t Here — and Why That Matters
Breguet cannot defend its 2025 title, barred by GPHG rules after winning. But the more striking absences are voluntary: Patek Philippe, Cartier, Vacheron Constantin, F.P. Journe, Richard Mille, A. Lange & Söhne, and Greubel Forsey are all sitting this year out. Between them, those seven brands account for a significant share of past Aiguille d’Or victories.
Their absence does not diminish the 84 nominees in front of the jury — if anything, it concentrates attention on the watches that are actually here. This is the most open Aiguille d’Or race in recent memory, and the names competing for it are serious ones.
Our Category Picks
Essential Watch — Grand Seiko Hand-engraved Manual-winding Spring Drive. The category was built for exactly this kind of piece: a watch with nothing to prove mechanically that earns its keep through craft. The Shizukuishi artisans’ lacquer work and hand-engraving is a discipline in itself, and Grand Seiko’s entry is the most convincing argument in the category that finishing and decoration can carry a nomination further than complications.
Mechanical Exception — H. Moser & Cie. Endeavour Minute Repeater Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton “Cosmic Rain.” Moser holds nominations across three categories this year, but the Mechanical Exception entry is the one that stretches the imagination furthest. A cylindrical gong system, a flying tourbillon, and the house’s signature fumé dial concept applied to a skeletonised movement of genuine complexity. Moser has been building toward a major GPHG result for years. This could be the year.
Chronograph — Rexhep Rexhepi Chronograph Flyback. The Albanian independent has spent a decade building watches that collectors discuss in the same breath as Patek and Journe. His Chronograph Flyback is the most convincing argument he has made yet: a column-wheel vertical clutch movement with hand-finished surfaces at a level most large houses cannot match. With Wei Koh — whose editorial career has been built on championing exactly this kind of maker — presiding over the jury, it is difficult to imagine this watch leaving Geneva empty-handed.
Sports — Grand Seiko Spring Drive U.F.A. Ushio 300 Diver. A diver with Spring Drive’s glide-spring regulation, co-created with professional freedivers, rated to 300 metres. The Sports category has historically favoured tool watches with serious real-world credentials, and this is exactly that: purpose and poetry in the same case.
Petite Aiguille — MING × J.N. Shapiro 37.06 Lightning. MING has received three consecutive nominations without a win. The Lightning edition feels like the one that ends that streak: the new lightning-bolt hand is a small idea executed with the kind of fanatical attention the Petite Aiguille was created to reward. The collector community already voted with its wallets — the edition sold out in minutes.
The Aiguille d’Or: Our Call
We are picking Rexhep Rexhepi’s Chronograph Flyback.
With the old guard largely absent and a jury president whose entire editorial career has been built on championing independent makers, the conditions for a Rexhepi victory have never been better. He is not an entry-level independent — there is nothing raw or unresolved about his work. The Chronograph Flyback is a finished, quiet, confident argument for why independent watchmaking matters. The GPHG exists, in part, to make exactly that argument alongside the brands that make it best.
Could we be wrong? Absolutely. The absence of Patek, VC, and Journe creates a vacuum the jury might fill with Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak 150th anniversary Chronograph RD#5 — a landmark piece for the most significant milestone in contemporary watchmaking — or with Ferdinand Berthoud’s FB 2TV, a tourbillon chronometer that would have been competitive in any year. But our instinct, six days out, is Rexhepi.
The ceremony begins on the evening of 7 November at the Palais des Nations, Geneva. The results will follow here.
Primary source: Euronews Culture, 26 October 2026. Nominees list via The Hour Markers. Jury composition via Watch Collecting Lifestyle.
