Geneva Watch Days closed its seventh edition on Sunday 6 September with records in almost every column. Over five days that began on Wednesday 2 September, 71 brands presented nearly 400 new watches across the city, and more than 2,500 collectors, private clients and enthusiasts came to see them, more than double the 2025 figure, according to the closing report published by The Hour Markers.
The main pavilion at the Rotonde du Mont-Blanc, on the lakefront, counted nearly 5,000 unique visitors, about 1,200 of them on the final Sunday. More than 500 international media and more than 300 retailers attended. A charity auction for young watchmakers raised CHF 115,500, and the programme ran from a regulating challenge to a Nobel Prize-winning physicist discussing the nature of time.
"This edition marks a new milestone," said Jean-Christophe Babin, President of the Geneva Watch Days Association, who is also CEO of Bulgari and of the LVMH Watch Division. For a fair that began six years ago as a scattered gathering in hotels around the lake, the figures say something larger. The open, city-wide format now stands beside the spring fair as a second pillar of the Swiss watch year.
A record in every column
Seventy-one brands took part this year, up from 66 in the official programme of 2025, and between them they presented nearly 400 new watches. Before the doors opened, Fratello had written that the fair "promises to be the biggest one yet". On every measure the organisers published, it was.
The more telling number is the public. More than 2,500 collectors, private clients and enthusiasts attended, more than twice as many as a year earlier. Babin said that, beyond the record count of brands and launches, the presence of these visitors was what he would remember above all. They came, he said, to see the watches and to speak with the people who make them.
The trade came too. More than 500 international media attended, along with more than 300 retailers, and there were 150 more content creators than in 2025, a reminder that watch news now travels through personal channels as well as through print.
The visitor figures also show how the week was spread out. The main pavilion drew nearly 5,000 unique visitors, around 1,200 of them on Sunday alone. The Blue Box, a free exhibition space about two minutes’ walk away, drew nearly 3,000 more, and the launches themselves were presented across the city rather than in a single hall.
From hotels to a lakeside pavilion
Geneva Watch Days was first held in 2020, a year in which the big spring fairs had been cancelled. It was decentralised and open from the start: rather than gather under one roof, brands received visitors in hotels and other spaces around the Geneva lakefront.
Six years on, the event has kept that spirit but added a centre. The pavilion at the Rotonde du Mont-Blanc gives it a front door, and the opening press conference has become a civic occasion. It was held at the Palais Eynard for the second year running, and the speakers were Delphine Bachmann, State Councillor in charge of the Department of Economy and Employment, Christina Kitsos, the Mayor of Geneva, and Babin himself.
Babin has been clear about the format. When the 2026 dates were announced in February, he said, as reported by Europa Star: "Year after year, it's been proven to be the right call." The fair stays open to the public for all five days, and it gives young brands a place alongside established names.
The contrast with Watches and Wonders, the larger fair held each spring at the Palexpo exhibition centre, is part of the appeal. The spring fair gathers the biggest houses under one roof. Geneva Watch Days spreads along the streets by the lake and invites visitors to walk between them. Babin describes its founding purpose as "watchmaking that is open, alive and accessible."
More than a trade fair
What sets the week apart is how much of it is about learning rather than buying.
The most ambitious session was Amplitude Op. II, staged by the Dominique Renaud Foundation. It brought together Didier Queloz, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, with the physicists Thomas Hertog, Janna Levin and Katie Mack to discuss the nature of time, under the theme The Time of the Universe, The Time We Imagine. It is an unusual subject for a watch fair, and a fitting one: every watch on show was, in the end, an attempt to measure the thing they were debating.
The CaliberShip Challenge, organised with the Geneva Watchmaking School and COSC, the official Swiss chronometer testing institute, put the craft into the hands of its participants. Twenty of them, coached by students from the school, regulated Sellita mechanical movements. Regulating is the delicate work of adjusting a movement so that it gains or loses as little time as possible. COSC then evaluated the results.
There were talks for those who follow the business. Karine Szegedi of Deloitte gave an overview of the Swiss watch ecosystem, from production to the secondary market. A session called GPHG Tribune: Next Gen saw Gianfranco Ritschel present this year’s Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, whose 84 finalists had been named the day before the fair opened, followed by a conversation with François-Henry Bennahmias, the former CEO of Audemars Piguet.
The programme also made room for the youngest visitors and the newest brands. The Musée International de l’Horlogerie ran a Kids’ Club for children aged 8 to 12 on the Sunday morning. A public Young Brands Touch & Feel session in the Collectors’ Lounge on the Saturday let visitors handle watches from newer names, and the independent watchmaker Konstantin Chaykin held a workshop limited to 15 places.
In the Blue Box, free to enter, the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie showed its exhibition Air, Earth, Fire, Water: 4 Elements in Time, with more than 130 timepieces arranged by the four elements and guided tours in English and French.
Money for the next generation
On Thursday 3 September, Phillips, in association with Bacs & Russo, ran the fair’s charity auction. Sixteen unique lots, donated by participating brands, raised CHF 115,500 for the Geneva Watchmaking School and the Pierre Amstutz Fund, which supports apprentices in financial difficulty. The top lot was a unique creation by Konstantin Chaykin, which sold for CHF 24,000.
The sale began in 2023 and has now raised CHF 519,400 in total. The sums are modest by the standards of the Geneva auction rooms, where a single watch can sell for millions. But they go where the industry’s future is decided: to the bench of a young watchmaker who might otherwise struggle to finish an apprenticeship.
Together with the CaliberShip Challenge and the Kids’ Club, the auction gives the week a clear thread. A fair that sells watches also spends its time on the people who will make them.
On the wrists
With nearly 400 launches, any list of highlights is partial. Wallpaper’s selection gives a sense of the range, from the Ming 57.05 Comet, limited to 200 pieces and priced from CHF 6,950 at launch, to the Daniel Roth Extra Plat Rose Gold Gilt, a slim, hand-wound watch in rose gold priced at CHF 55,000 at launch.
Between them sat the Zenith Chronomaster Solo Sport, a 40mm steel watch with a ceramic bezel and a movement beating at 5Hz, priced at CHF 8,900 at launch, and a Bulgari Octo Finissimo Dual Time reworked with the independent watchmaker Vianney Halter, limited to 30 pieces in titanium and 10 in pink gold. Seven of the week’s launches are covered in a separate BYGEARS feature.
The spread is the point. A fair that can show a watch at under CHF 7,000 and one at CHF 55,000 within a short walk of each other is speaking to more than one kind of collector.
A little too much of a good thing?
Not every verdict was unqualified. Lex Stolk of Fratello, whose review said the fair had delivered, also asked whether 71 brands was "a little bit too much of a good thing?" It is a fair question for a format whose charm lies in walking from one brand to the next. A city-wide fair works best when a visitor can see what matters in a day or two. With 71 brands and nearly 400 watches, visitors had to choose.
Growth also changes who comes. The 150 extra content creators and the doubling of private visitors suggest the fair now reaches well beyond the trade. That is what its founders wanted, but a larger public brings its own demands: more space, more staff and more careful planning so that the open doors stay open.
The fair also opened in a better mood than the spring. Swiss watch exports rose 9.6% in July 2026, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, after months in which the figures had been distorted by an unusual rush of shipments a year earlier. Attendance is not the same as orders, and the fair published no sales figures. But a doubling of private visitors is a sign of real interest among collectors going into the autumn.
What it means for the Gulf
For Gulf collectors who know Geneva through Watches and Wonders, the September fair offers something different: a wider spread of brands, smaller makers who receive visitors themselves, and a public programme that treats watchmaking as a subject to learn about.
Its timing matters too. Geneva Watch Days now opens the autumn season of prizes. The 84 finalists of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève were named on 1 September, and the winners are due to be announced in Geneva on Saturday 7 November. Two of the 24 jurors who will decide them are based in Dubai: Hind Abdul Hamied Seddiqi, CEO of Dubai Watch Week, and Adel Al-Rahmani, co-founder of Dubai Watch Club. Gulf voices will help settle the year’s most closely watched prize.
The region also has its own version of the idea. Dubai Watch Week, founded by Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons in 2015, has built its reputation on conversations between craftsmen, industry leaders and collectors at its Horology Forum. Babin’s phrase, "open, alive and accessible", would sit comfortably there.
Geneva Watch Days has shown that an open fair can grow without closing its doors. The test for next year is whether it can keep growing and still let a visitor walk from the lake to a watchmaker’s table in a couple of minutes.
Sources: The Hour Markers, The Hour Markers, Europa Star, Fratello, Wallpaper, Watch Collecting Lifestyle