11 Must-See New Watches From the Industry’s Most Daring Show

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Just six years in, Geneva Watch Days—the latest edition of which begins today—already feels like a critical part of the watch industry calendar. Watches and Wonders is the huge party in the spring, but surely the hangover from gorging on so many watches at once has worn off by now? In 2020, Breitling, Bvlgari, MB&F, H. Moser & Cie, and Girard-Perregaux organized GWD as a bridge through the end of the year. Since its inception, it’s been a home for smaller brands to showcase their talents and larger brands to display some of their more inventive fare.

My Geneva Watch Days experience actually started a few weeks ago when TAG Heuer, which is participating in the show for the first time, sent me one of its new models, the Astronomer. The watch pretty neatly sums up what GWD is all about. TH is well known for its history on the racetracks, where its Carrera was and is a mainstay in the paddocks; the Steve McQueen flick Le Mans made the Monaco a legend. TAG mined its history thoroughly at Watches and Wonders this year with new versions of both aforementioned watches as well as the Formula 1. But for GWD, the brand is introducing a new model that takes the brand about as far away from the racetrack as you can get: space. It’s a fitting debut for GWD, which is making a name for itself on the back of these types of novel new releases.

Keep reading for my favorites from this year’s Geneva Watch Days.

TAG Heuer Astronomer

The Astronomer didn’t just crash down like a piece of a broken satellite. TAG found justification in its archives for the space-themed timepiece. Back in 1962, while John Glenn orbited Earth aboard NASA’s Friendship 7 spacecraft, he used a Heuer 2915A stopwatch. This was actually the first Swiss timepiece to leave the atmosphere. TAG dug back into that history, sent it through a time machine to 2025, and wound up with the Astronomer.

All three versions of the Astronomer start with a silver dial as a base and then add in different accents: rose gold, black, and one that combines grey with turquoise. I got my hands on the black version, which I think is by far the best. What I appreciated about the watch during my time with it is that TAG used the opportunity to create that big moonphase subdial at the center. The watch’s silver-and-black combination reminded me of what is one of TAG’s most iconic pieces—and maybe my favorite in the brand’s archives—the beautiful 2447 SN.