On 7 November, 2026, the Oscars of watchmaking handed their top award to a 39-year-old independent whose entire operation could fit in Patek Philippe’s reception area. That’s not a coincidence. It’s a confession.
On Saturday night in Geneva, in a former hydroelectric power station, the 26th Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève did what it does best: it dressed up the state of the Swiss watch industry in black tie and pretended everything was fine for three hours. Then it gave the Aiguille d’Or — the closest thing horology has to Best Picture — to Rexhep Rexhepi, a 39-year-old independent watchmaker, for his first-ever chronograph.
If you follow the watchmaking industry, the message was about as subtle as a repeater striking midnight. In a year when the big groups are shedding jobs and the mid-market is on life support, Geneva’s 1,000-member Academy and its jury, chaired this year by Wei Koh, handed twenty prizes to — mostly — the smallest, slowest, most hand-finished things the industry still makes. The bench won. The boardroom watched from the audience.
The watch: a flyback with nothing to prove
Let’s be clear about the winner, because it deserves more than a press-release paragraph. The Chronograph Flyback (the RRCHF, if you enjoy acronyms) is a hand-wound, integrated flyback chronograph with a column wheel and lateral clutch, an instantaneous jumping-minute counter, 320 components and 72 hours of power reserve — all squeezed into a platinum case of 38.8mm and just 9.7mm thick. The dial is storm-blue grand feu enamel made in Rexhepi’s own workshops, with smoked sapphire counters, and the movement is finished to a level that makes other brands’ “haute horlogerie” departments look like they subcontract to a car wash.
It costs CHF 150,000 — about $216,000 landed in the United States once you’ve paid the courtesy of tariffs. Which, in the current market, counts as reasonably priced, in the way that a small yacht is reasonably priced compared to a large one.
Rexhepi had already collected GPHG silverware in 2018 and 2022, but never the big one; the smart money noticed he didn’t win the chronograph category on the night — Parmigiani Fleurier’s Tonda PF Chronographe Mystérieux did — which, as any Oscar-watcher knows, is the classic sign the evening has bigger plans for you. His victory makes it the second time this decade the top prize has gone to an independent, after Maximilian Büsser’s in 2022.
Read the prize list like a mood ring
A GPHG palmarès is never just a list. It’s an ECG of the industry’s anxieties. This year’s readings:
The family houses feasted. The Scheufele family quietly walked off with four prizes — two for Chopard (the L.U.C 1860 in Time Only, the Mystery Nut in Jewellery) and two for their other house, Ferdinand Berthoud. Audemars Piguet, celebrating its 150th, took two more — including the Iconic prize for a Royal Oak whose full name runs to roughly fourteen words and outlasted most of the acceptance speeches. Richemont, owner of a dozen maisons, managed exactly one: Piaget’s Swinging Pebble. Swatch Group: one. When the conglomerates are bringing home fewer trophies than a family from the Jura, the word “rebalancing” comes to mind.
Patek Philippe won a prize for an exhibition. Not a watch — an exhibition. The Special Jury Prize went to the Watch Art Grand Exhibition, Patek’s travelling museum of itself. This is the watchmaking industry equivalent of a lifetime-achievement Oscar: warm, dignified, and conveniently immune to being compared with an actual competitor.
The “Horological Revelation” is a man with four decades of résumé. The prize for newcomers went to Dominique Renaud — the Dominique Renaud who co-founded Renaud & Papi — for the Pulse60 Titanium Black, a watch whose 20mm balance beats at 60 beats per minute, the frequency of a resting human heart. A lovely watch, and a revealing choice: when the industry’s “revelation” is a veteran legend, it tells you where the new ideas are actually coming from.
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Discover the world’s most prestigious gatherings & exhibitionsThe future is tiny, expensive and sold out. The Complication prize went to Cleguer’s Inspiration One — the debut watch of 35-year-old Breton engineer Mathieu Cleguer, nine years in development, twelve pieces in the souscription series, all pre-sold before the ceremony. Meanwhile the more accessible end of the palmarès — Petite Aiguille to Tokyo micro-brand Otsuka Lotec, Challenge to SpaceOne’s collaboration with Baltic — went to watches made by operations the size of a good dinner party. Which is entirely as it should be: remarkable watchmaking can be made at any price, and the GPHG keeps dedicated categories for accessible watches to prove it. What the 2026 list quietly records is simply what the industry now fields at those price points — micro-workshops rather than mid-tier maisons. The Academy can only crown what is made.
The part nobody said on stage
Here is the awkward context for all that glitter. Swiss watch exports are up 2.7% for the first nine months of 2026, at CHF 19.5 billion. That headline, however, deserves an asterisk the size of a tourbillon cage. September’s cheerful +11.7% was driven largely by a +86% surge in US shipments — a base effect against September 2025, which Washington’s 39% tariff on Swiss goods had flattened like a poorly adjusted hairspring; the rate was later negotiated down to 15%.
China, once the industry’s second-largest market, has slipped to sixth, down 14.2% in September, squeezed by a 100% luxury VAT and visa friction. A Swiss-Chinese trade agreement due this autumn will cut most tariffs to zero — helpful, though rather like closing the barn door after the horse has emigrated.
And the jobs. Zenith is consulting on up to 200 cuts — half its manufacture — while IWC said goodbye to 18 this autumn, and Breitling, Montblanc and Chopard itself have all trimmed. Yes, the same Chopard that won two prizes on Saturday. Deloitte’s latest study puts it in one cold sentence: export volumes have fallen 43% since 2016 while value rose 34%, and half of all suppliers have cut staff. The industry is not shrinking, you understand. It is ascensioning — selling fewer, ever-more-expensive objects to an ever-narrower apex of collectors, mostly American for now.
Which is exactly why the GPHG crowned what it crowned. When the base of the pyramid erodes, you decorate the summit. A CHF 150,000 handmade flyback chronograph from a workshop that could fit inside a manufacturing lobby is not just a worthy winner — it is the industry’s entire business plan rendered in platinum and storm-blue enamel. The craft won because craft is the only thing left that nobody can tariff, discount, or 3D-print.
The GPHG didn’t crown a watch this year. It crowned a strategy: fewer watches, better hands, richer buyers.
The winning timepieces now travel to London, 18–23 November, at the Watches of Switzerland boutique in Knightsbridge — a sensible venue, given how many Swiss watches are currently living in transit. Whether the middle market ever returns is a question for the next five editions. For now, the golden needle points upward, and to the left: toward the independents, the family houses, and anyone still willing to polish a steel bridge by hand while the parking lots of the Jura stand empty.
Prize list 2026:
“Aiguille d’Or” Grand Prix: Rexhep Rexhepi, Chronograph Flyback
Iconic Watch Prize: Audemars Piguet, Royal Oak “Jumbo” Extra-thin Selfwinding Flying Tourbillon
Chronograph RD#5 “150th Anniversary”
Special Jury Prize: Patek Philippe, Watch Art Grand Exhibition
Audacity Prize: Konstantin Chaykin, ThinKing Mystery
Chronometry Prize: Ferdinand Berthoud, Naissance d’une Montre 3
Horological Revelation Prize: Dominique Renaud, Pulse60 Titanium Black
Mechanical Exception Watch Prize: Blancpain, Grande Double Sonnerie
Complication Watch Prize: Cleguer, Inspiration One
Chronograph Watch Prize: Parmigiani Fleurier, Tonda PF Chronographe Mystérieux
Tourbillon Watch Prize: Ferdinand Berthoud, Chronomètre FB 2TV
Sports Watch Prize: Grand Seiko, Spring Drive U.F.A. Ushio 300 Diver
Calendar and Astronomy Watch Prize: Audemars Piguet, 150 Heritage
Essential Watch Prize: Daniel Roth, Extra Plat Rose Gold Skeleton
Time Only Watch Prize: Chopard, L.U.C 1860
Jewellery Watch Prize: Chopard, Mystery Nut
Artistic Crafts Watch Prize: Louis Vuitton, Tambour Taiko Arty Automata
Gemset Watch Prize: Piaget, Swinging Pebble
“Petite Aiguille” Watch Prize: Otsuka Lotec, No.8
Challenge Watch Prize: SpaceOne, SpaceOne X Baltic – Seconde Majeure
Mechanical Clock Prize: La Vallée, Cosmo
