The Watch Market Is Changing: What Collectors, Brands and Enthusiasts Should Be Watching in 2026
Personal thoughts and opinions by Patrick Ramos.
For several years, the watch market was easy to describe.
Demand was high. Availability was low. Secondary-market prices climbed. Certain steel sports watches became nearly impossible to purchase at retail, and a new generation of buyers entered the hobby with one eye on the watch and another on what it might be worth six months later.
That market is gone. But that does not mean the watch market is in decline. Instead, it appears to be separating.
The speculative market is becoming a collector market again. The broad middle is under pressure. The strongest brands continue to consolidate market share, while smaller independent brands with genuine identity are finding new audiences. Buyers are more educated, more selective and increasingly willing to look beyond the handful of watches that dominated the conversation a few years ago.
Perhaps most importantly, the question is changing.
Instead of simply asking, “What watch should I buy?” more collectors are beginning to ask, “Why is this watch worth owning?”
That distinction may define the next era of watch collecting.
Fewer Watches, More Value
One of the most important trends in the Swiss watch industry has been developing for decades.
In 2000, Switzerland exported approximately 29.7 million watches with a total export value of CHF 9.3 billion. By 2025, export volume had fallen to roughly 14.6 million watches while export value had climbed to CHF 24.4 billion.
In other words, Switzerland is selling roughly half as many watches while generating considerably more value from them.
The industry has increasingly moved upmarket.
Watches priced above CHF 3,000 accounted for approximately CHF 19.5 billion of Swiss export value in 2025, while the very highest end of the market continues to generate a disproportionate share of industry growth.
That strategy has created extraordinary businesses at the top of the market. It has also created a potential weakness: the industry is increasingly dependent on fewer customers purchasing increasingly expensive watches.
For collectors, that makes the middle of the market particularly interesting.
A $5,000, $8,000 or $12,000 watch now has to work harder to justify itself. It is competing not only against another new watch, but against an enormous pre-owned market, increasingly sophisticated microbrands and independents, and countless other ways a consumer could spend the same money.
The name on the dial is no longer always enough.
The Secondary Market Is Becoming Rational Again
The secondary watch market has also changed considerably since the peak of the pandemic-era watch boom.
Prices have stabilized and, in some areas, begun climbing again. WatchCharts reported that its overall market index gained 4.9 percent in 2025 after declining in both 2023 and 2024. By early 2026, the market had recorded several consecutive quarters of growth.
That sounds bullish, but it needs context. Most watches still do not trade above retail.
Outside of a relatively small group of highly desirable references—particularly from Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet—many watches trade at substantial discounts from their current MSRP.
That is not necessarily bad news for enthusiasts.
In fact, it may be one of the healthiest developments in the market.
The difference between value retention and value received is becoming clearer.
A watch can be a poor purchase at $12,000 new and an exceptional purchase at $7,500 pre-owned.
It can depreciate and still be a great watch. It can also appreciate and still be something you do not particularly enjoy owning.
As speculation becomes less dominant, collectors have more freedom to evaluate watches for what they actually are.
The Hottest Question in Watches: Is It Worth It?
More than any particular complication, dial color or case shape, the most important conversation happening in watches right now may be about value.
Retail prices have continued to rise across much of the industry. At the same time, buyers have unprecedented access to information about movements, manufacturing, finishing, production numbers and secondary-market prices.
That creates an uncomfortable question for some brands:
Why does this watch cost what it costs?
Heritage alone cannot always answer it. Neither can exclusivity, particularly when scarcity feels manufactured. Consumers increasingly want to understand what they are receiving for their money.
This is one reason watches such as the Christopher Ward Bel Canto have been so disruptive. The significance of the Bel Canto is not that it needs to compete directly with a six-figure chiming watch. It is that it changes what consumers believe should be possible at a particular price.
The same pressure is coming from independent brands, microbrands and the pre-owned market.
Prestige still matters. But prestige increasingly has to coexist with substance.
Taste Is Getting More Interesting
For much of the last decade, the dominant formula was relatively predictable: round case, steel bracelet, sports-watch architecture, black or blue dial and enough water resistance to suggest an adventurous life whether or not the watch ever left the office.
That formula is loosening.
Smaller watches are back.
Dress watches are increasingly being worn casually.
Rectangular and shaped cases are receiving renewed attention.
Gold, champagne, brown, burgundy and warmer tones are appearing more frequently.
Vintage and neo-vintage references are finding younger audiences.
Cartier is perhaps the clearest example of the shift. The Tank and Santos families sit at the intersection of watches, jewelry, fashion and industrial design. They can be worn by men or women, purchased new or vintage, and appreciated without requiring the buyer to subscribe to traditional sports-watch collecting rules.
Jaeger-LeCoultre's Reverso is benefiting from similar interest in recognizable shapes and historically significant design.
Collectors are rediscovering something the industry occasionally forgets: A watch does not have to look rugged to be interesting.
Younger Collectors Aren't Following the Old Rules
Millennial and Gen Z buyers are also changing the visual language of collecting. They appear increasingly comfortable combining things that previous generations of collectors often kept separate:
Vintage and modern.
Luxury and accessible.
Mechanical and quartz.
Traditional men's and women's watches.
Fashion and horology.
A Cartier Tank can share a collection with a G-Shock. A vintage Omega can sit next to a modern independent. A smaller watch does not automatically become a “women's watch,” and a quartz movement does not automatically make something uninteresting.
That willingness to cross categories could ultimately be healthy for the industry. It allows collectors to build collections around personal taste rather than a checklist of watches the internet has decided everyone should own.
Independents Have an Opening
The consolidation occurring at the top of the Swiss watch industry is difficult to ignore.
Rolex remains extraordinarily powerful. Cartier continues to gain cultural relevance. Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and Richard Mille occupy rarefied positions at the top of the market.
Competing directly with those companies is nearly impossible.
But smaller brands do not necessarily need to.
The more interesting opportunity is to become unmistakable.
Christopher Ward is an important company to watch for precisely this reason. The Bel Canto demonstrated that an independent brand operating at a relatively accessible price could create a watch capable of changing the conversation around technical value.
NORQAIN is pursuing a different path.
The Wild ONE platform gives the young Swiss company something increasingly valuable: a product that is visually and structurally identifiable as its own. The lightweight NORTEQ case construction, shock resistance, skeletonized architecture and performance positioning give the watch a reason to exist beyond simply offering another Swiss mechanical sports watch.
Brands such as Fears, Studio Underd0g, H. Moser & Cie., MB&F and F.P. Journe operate at wildly different price points, but they demonstrate a similar principle.
Personality has economic value.
Collectors increasingly want to understand not only what was made, but who made it, why they made it and what they believe.
Neo-Vintage May Be One of the Most Interesting Places to Look
The growing interest in watches from the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s is particularly interesting because the same shift is happening in automotive collecting.
For years, these watches existed in an awkward space. They were not new enough to feel contemporary and not old enough to qualify as traditionally collectible vintage pieces. Time has changed that.
Collectors are rediscovering Omega, Breitling, TAG Heuer, IWC, Cartier, Zenith, Porsche Design and countless unusual references from this period.
They often offer smaller proportions, recognizable brands, interesting complications and significantly lower prices than comparable new watches.
They also carry nostalgia. And nostalgia matters.
The person who saw a Porsche 911, BMW M3 or Japanese performance car in a magazine as a teenager is now old enough to collect it. The same person may remember the watches worn by athletes, racing drivers, executives or family members during that period.
That brings us to the other half of the Wrist & Wheel equation.
Cars and Watches Are Entering the Same Cultural Era
The connection between watches and automobiles is often reduced to racing chronographs, carbon fiber and a matching stripe on a dial.
The actual relationship is much deeper. Both mechanical watches and enthusiast automobiles are becoming increasingly unnecessary in purely functional terms.
Nobody needs a mechanical watch to know the time. Increasingly, nobody needs an enthusiast automobile simply to get from one place to another.
Modern transportation is becoming more electrified, automated, software-driven, quiet and efficient. Meanwhile, the experiences associated with analog driving—manual transmissions, hydraulic steering, naturally aspirated engines and mechanical feedback—are becoming more culturally significant precisely because they are no longer necessary.
Mechanical watches underwent that transition decades ago.
Winding a watch is inefficient.
Operating a mechanical chronograph is unnecessary.
Listening to a mechanical chime accomplishes something a phone could do more accurately.
And yet those actions matter because the owner participates in them.
The machine asks something of you. That may ultimately be the most important connection between watches and cars.
Participation Is Becoming the Luxury
The future of mechanical luxury may have less to do with possessing something and more to do with participating in it.
Drive the car. Wind the watch. Learn how it works. Maintain it. Travel with it. Take it somewhere meaningful. Meet the people who built it. Share it with someone else. Allow it to accumulate evidence of a life rather than protecting it from one. This is also why some automotive and watch collaborations succeed while others feel manufactured.
Putting a car manufacturer's logo on a dial does not automatically create an authentic automotive watch. Carbon fiber does not automatically create motorsport credibility.
The better question is whether the products share a philosophy.
Does lightweight construction matter to both?
Does legibility?
Does durability?
Does aerodynamic or industrial design influence the architecture?
Is there genuine historical overlap?
Do the same kinds of people actually use these products?
When those connections exist, the partnership becomes more than co-branding.It becomes cultural.
What Should Collectors Watch Next?
Several areas deserve particular attention through the remainder of 2026 and beyond.
Cartier and the continued growth of shaped watches will tell us whether the industry's design shift has staying power.
Christopher Ward will show whether enthusiast-driven independent growth can scale without losing what made the brand appealing in the first place.
NORQAIN will be worth watching as it attempts to turn recognition into a distinct long-term identity.
TAG Heuer's renewed Formula 1 involvement and deep motorsport history create an opportunity to demonstrate what authentic automotive positioning can look like.
Porsche Design remains one of the most historically credible intersections of automotive thinking and watch design.
Meanwhile, neo-vintage Omega, IWC, Breitling and TAG Heuer may offer some of the most interesting collecting opportunities for buyers willing to look beyond whatever is newest.
And across the entire industry, the relationship between retail price and secondary-market value deserves continued attention.
The Market Isn't Dying. It's Sorting Itself Out.
The current environment is difficult for undifferentiated brands. It is difficult for dealers who relied on perpetual appreciation. It is difficult for products whose primary selling point is manufactured scarcity.
And it may become increasingly difficult for content built around photographing the same handful of watches and repeating their specifications.
But that does not make this a bad period for watch collecting. It may make it a better one. The easy money is leaving. The shallow attention is becoming less valuable. Collectors are developing their own tastes again.
Smaller brands have opportunities to earn attention through genuine originality. Pre-owned buyers can access extraordinary watches at prices considerably below retail. Younger collectors are challenging old assumptions about what belongs in a serious collection.
And watches are increasingly finding their place alongside cars, travel, design, craftsmanship and other experiences rather than existing as isolated luxury objects.
For Wrist & Wheel, that is where the story becomes most interesting. We believe the real meeting point between watches and automobiles isn't found in a racing stripe or a logo. It is found in mechanical objects, human participation and the lives built around them.
The car should be driven.
The watch should be worn.
The machine should be understood.
And ultimately, the owner should participate.
Because in a world where nearly everything is becoming easier, faster, more automated and more disposable, choosing to participate may be one of the most meaningful luxuries left.
