The Story
Geneva has hosted major watch gatherings for decades, but Geneva Watch Days occupies a particular place in that history.
The Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie — SIHH — began in 1991 when Cartier, Baume & Mercier, Piaget, Gérald Genta and Daniel Roth created a separate Geneva salon centred on high-end watchmaking. Over time it became one of the industry’s principal international gatherings. In 2020, following several years of evolution and greater openness, the SIHH identity gave way to Watches & Wonders Geneva.
The structure around Watches & Wonders changed again after the disruption of 2020 and the collapse of the traditional Baselworld model. Today, Watches and Wonders is governed by the Watches and Wonders Geneva Foundation, created in 2022 on the initiative of Rolex, Richemont and Patek Philippe, and later joined at board level by Chanel, Hermès and LVMH. It remains the large institutional spring gathering of the international watch industry.
Geneva has also long provided space for another side of watchmaking.
In 2010, while SIHH was taking place, the first Geneva Time Exhibition — GTE opened at the Centre International de Conférences de Genève. Conceived for independent watchmakers and smaller manufacturers, it created a parallel meeting place for professionals and collectors. Later editions moved around the city — including Espace Hippomène in 2012 and the Bâtiment des Forces Motrices in 2013 — before the event disappeared from the calendar.
A different model appeared in 2020.
Geneva Watch Days was created amid the cancellation of the year’s major watch fairs. Its official history identifies six founding houses — Breitling, Bvlgari, De Bethune, Girard-Perregaux, H. Moser & Cie. and MB&F — while Jean-Christophe Babin became its principal promoter, co-founder and later president. The idea was deliberately lighter: a self-managed, collaborative event in which brands could meet retailers, media and collectors without reproducing the infrastructure of a traditional fair.
Six years later, that temporary response has become an event in its own right.
The 2026 edition ran from 2 to 6 September and brought together 71 participating houses, a new record. Rather than placing every meeting inside a single exhibition hall, Geneva Watch Days spreads across the city. The Pavilion and Blue Box on the Rotonde du Mont-Blanc form the public centre of the event, while participating houses receive visitors in showrooms around Geneva. The official format combines 71 brands, five days, public exhibitions, talks, guided experiences and private hospitality.
For visitors, the distinction with Watches and Wonders is immediately apparent.
Watches and Wonders operates at the scale of a major international salon. Geneva Watch Days is more dispersed and conversational. Large houses coexist with specialist manufactures, young brands and independent creators. Meetings often take place around a table, in a hotel suite or directly with the people responsible for designing, building or running the company.
The Beau-Rivage became one of those important meeting points during the week, with multiple participating houses occupying rooms and suites for private presentations. The complete list of the 71 participating houses remains available through the official Geneva Watch Days directory.
Geneva Watch Days — 71 participating houses
The Pavilion added another dimension. Some activities remained invitation-only — including CEO breakfasts, the Collectors’ Lounge and selected hospitality events — while many talks, workshops and presentations were deliberately opened to the public. It gave collectors and enthusiasts an unusual opportunity to move between highly specialised watchmaking and a broader cultural programme.
The opening illustrated the scale the event has now reached. Geneva Watch Days reported that the ribbon-cutting brought together the CEOs of the 71 exhibiting brands, with the Pavilion facing the lake and the Jet d’Eau.
Yet the most distinctive element remains less visible in the numbers: access.
Geneva Watch Days creates the possibility of meeting the people behind the objects — founders, executives, designers, watchmakers and collectors — often within the same few streets.
That may be its most convincing difference.
My Editorial Experience
My own relationship with Geneva’s watch week goes back much further than Geneva Watch Days.
I first attended the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie in 2010. At the same time, I also discovered the Geneva Time Exhibition, the independent watch fair that then ran in parallel with SIHH. Those two worlds already showed two different sides of the same industry: the scale and ceremony of the established maisons, and the much more direct contact offered by smaller independent watchmakers.
Returning to Geneva Watch Days in 2026 therefore felt both familiar and different.
The opening evening was probably the clearest example. Seeing so many of the people responsible for the participating houses gathered in one place is unusual. The setting — directly beside Lake Geneva and the Jet d’Eau — made it even more particular.
During the following days, much of my time was spent moving between the Pavilion and appointments in the city.
At the Beau-Rivage, entire floors had effectively become a temporary watchmaking neighbourhood. Doors opened onto very different worlds: established manufactures, younger independent brands and watchmakers presenting pieces in surroundings that felt closer to a private appointment than a conventional trade fair.
Not every maison could simply be visited spontaneously. The most sought-after presentations were heavily booked, and for houses such as Greubel Forsey an appointment arranged in advance was essential. That is one of the practical realities of Geneva Watch Days: the atmosphere may appear relaxed, but serious preparation makes an enormous difference.
I did not have enough time to visit all 71 brands, and that was probably impossible anyway.
Instead, a smaller number of encounters became the story.
There were also visits to ORIS, Frédérique Constant and other houses, each with a very different visual language.
One of the encounters that stayed with me began during an evening conversation with François Moreau, founder and CEO of RESERVOIR. My brother was looking at one of the Popeye watches, and I realised that I had already come across the brand years earlier at Baselworld.
The following day, I returned for a proper presentation of the collection. RESERVOIR draws much of its visual language from mechanical instruments — automotive gauges, diving instruments and other displays designed to measure performance. It was a good example of what Geneva Watch Days does well: a brief conversation can lead, the next day, to a much deeper discovery of a brand.
MB&F was another reminder of how far independent watchmaking can move beyond the conventional idea of a wristwatch.
The evenings changed the rhythm again.
On Thursday, the official programme brought together the Sponsors & Geneva Circle Night, followed at 21:30 by a Cassius set presented by ALTO. During Geneva Watch Days, ALTO was also presenting the ART 02, its new titanium watch powered by the manufacture A02 calibre. The music moved easily through several decades, and after a full day of appointments and presentations the Pavilion became something quite different from an exhibition space.
The problem, of course, came the following morning.
Geneva Watch Days starts early.
Several days began with the Power Breakfasts with CEOs, bringing together executives and guests around subjects that extended beyond watchmaking itself. I attended some of these discussions separately, and they deserve their own story rather than being reduced to a paragraph here.
What stayed with me most, however, was the movement of people.
Over a few days I spoke with visitors and professionals coming from Germany, Japan and elsewhere, exchanged contacts and repeatedly found conversations beginning with a watch but moving towards design, entrepreneurship, travel, Geneva or simply the pleasure of discovering something new.
That is where Geneva Watch Days works particularly well.
The watches remain the reason everyone comes. But the event is ultimately built around the people who make them, sell them, collect them and care enough about them to cross countries simply to continue the conversation.
And with Geneva outside the window — the lake, the mountains and the Jet d’Eau — it is difficult to imagine a more appropriate place for it.
I am already looking forward to returning next year.
Palomino Gallery
