Six Releases From Geneva Watch Days That Flew Under The Radar

Looking back at a hectic but beguiling Geneva Watch Days that finished just over a week ago, some watches kept a whisper-quiet profile, while some star novelties stayed on the pages of my notebook but never made it online. Some of this can be blamed on my 20-hour days at the event... In hindsight, they come to the fore, offering potential show-winning qualities or a value-driven price that stands out. From golden-hour moon phases to a tantalum-and-gold collaboration, here are six standouts that slipped under most people's radars but deserve some time in the spotlight.

Laurent Ferrier is an easy brand to fall in love with, blending timeless elegance with top-tier sports-watch style in titanium. This year at the GWD, the Ferrier team has warmed up its annual-calendar-and-moonphase Classic Moon and offered it for the first time in yellow gold. If you were following along with our Instagram Reels from the event, you would've seen me twirling the trademark soft-contoured 40mm Galet case, a word meaning pebble and echoing its smooth shape.

It frames an unusual dial, at first sight taking on the distinctly vintage vibe of a ‘tropical’ dial, the sought-after fade-in-the-sun look that can quadruple the price of some vintage watches. Matte, silken fumé colours are not unusual for Laurent Ferrier, but the warm tones of faded taupe, even beige centre framed by a dark chocolate outer calendar work exceedingly well with the yellow gold case.

The warm tone of yellow 18K is trending across many brands, and for Laurent Ferrier, it accentuates the traditional aesthetic of the award-winning Classic Moon. This model represents LF's first attempt at a moonphase complication: just like the first two iterations of the model, the moonphase at 6 offers an Easter egg, this time involving a circular sub-dial cut from gold-sheen obsidian and crossed by an anise-yellow plique-a-jour enamel bridge.

Capturing that fleeting golden hour before dusk, this handsome thing is a limited edition of twenty pieces. The price is set at CHF 93,000 excluding tax, and it features the hand-wound LF126.02 calibre with a strong 80-hour power reserve. This is visible on a movement-side indicator, within the brand’s well-known architecture featuring rhodium-plated Côtes de Genève on the bridges, circular graining, polished bevels, interior angles and mirror-polished screw heads. This baby was Ben Clymer's favourite watch from the fair, and we here at Hodinkee ANZ love it too.

Another perpetual calendar! Fears was first established in 1846 by Edwin Fear in Bristol, ran for 130 years until it closed in 1976, and was re-established by Edwin Fear’s great-great-great-grandson, Nicholas Bowman-Scargill, a decade ago. This year marks its 180th anniversary and the tenth year since its revival, and the affable Bowman-Scargill has marked the occasion with its first-ever high complication, debuting at GWD '26 with a crisp, silver-white dial. This is a bold move for a brand that hasn't had a chronograph on its books, sticking to time-only designs except for more complex collaborations with British brands like Garrick or its jumping-hour models.

The new Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar sits within the recognisable 39mm Brunswick cushion case architecture, the brand’s calling card, and moves the collection decidedly upmarket. This is the first modern automatic perpetual calendar from a British house and has a balanced dial layout with the traditional placement of a moonphase at six o’clock, setting the tone.

The three azurage subdials with months and a leap-year indicator at 12 are all printed in a bespoke Bristol typeface, while a combination of newly introduced brushed and polished case surfaces completes a traditional yet modern picture. With its trademark onion crown and case-recessed pushers to adjust the movement, it aces the Brunswick collection by being the thinnest at 9.4mm, impressive for a QP.

The frosted dial, with its ‘Silver Mink’ tone, features a pure silver coating and does a balanced job of displaying the complexities of the new movement, based on a Sellita SW30 base with a modified Dubois Dépraz perpetual calendar module on top, plus a custom 18K gold rotor. The price is set at £26,950 including tax (Editor's Note: somewhat pricey, but it's very pretty), and it will be part of the permanent Eminence Collection.

Few words quicken a De Bethune collector's pulse like “Digitale.” For De Bethune, it signals the brand's digital jumping-hour display, returning after a twelve-year absence. But despite current trends, this is no hype-train jumper (pun unintended) born of the entrance of new CEO Antoine Pin, formerly of TAG Heuer and his first time heading an independent brand. In fact, it first appeared on the 2006 DBD, and last surfaced on the 2014 DB28 Digitale. For 2026, we are treated to oodles of De Bethune’s signature searing blue, but in the more classical, drum-shaped DB25 case; the result is theatre through colourful restraint, without the trademark hinged lugs. It works.

Hands and hour markers are absent, leaving the guilloché and strong two-tone design to work its magic, with a jumping-hour window at 12, a rotating minute disc at six, and in the centre the brand's fascinating spherical moon. The two polished hemispheres in palladium and flame-blued steel are accurate to within a single lunar day every 1,112 years, and around it, a blued titanium sky is hand-set with grey-gold star-pins, framed by a deep-blue random guilloche disc.

Beneath sits the third-generation DB2144 calibre in a 42mm grade 5 titanium case, big for me but worth it as I am a blue dial man. It comes across as elaborate yet restrained, unless you’re into the matte-black tool-watch style, in which case this will be a bit exuberant. Price upon request, and powered by the third-gen DB2144 calibre with its space-ship-like deltoid bridge.

The UR-150 Scorpion arrived in 2024 and represents Urwerk’s Martin Frei and Felix Baumgartner at their most organic. It has offered a smoother, less sci-fi evolution of the wandering-hours language the brand has explored for a scarcely believable 29 years this year, and after Titan, Dark and Blue editions, it now gets its most precious treatment yet. In Geneva, I was treated to a radiant yellow gold case, middle and crown over a trademark black-PVD grade 5 titanium back. I was similarly taken aback last year when I got my mittens on the diamond-set UR-101 Diamond Sky.

For me, the juxtaposition of future-industrial chic and gems and/or precious metal just makes me smile, and the signature display remains mesmerising, if even more unattainable thanks to the weighty metal. Three separate hour satellites rotate on a central flying carousel, the active hour carried within a large open-worked retrograde hand that sweeps a dramatic 240-degree arc, far wider than the usual 120, before it snaps back to zero in a hundredth of a second. The curved 42.5mm case of the UR-150 Golden Scorpion hugs the wrist, softening its dramatic appearance with the warmth of yellow gold.

Limited to 25 pieces, its sting comes with a price tag of CHF 105,000 excl. tax, and is 42.5 x 51 x 14.8mm, powered by the automatic UR-50.01 movement with a 43-hour power reserve.

A veteran Swiss-American collector, William Massena has offered us a lot of interesting collaborative efforts through Massena LAB, and this time joins forces with the Franco-Chinese Atelier Wen, and the result is one of the most quietly ambitious collaborations of the week... And the weightiest watch I wore in Geneva at the Watch Days, thanks to the grey delight of tantalum. William Massena's New York studio has worked with Robin Tallendier and Wilfried Buiron of Atelier Wen to reimagine the latter's Inflection, which boasts a 40mm integrated case and bracelet made from 99.9% pure tantalum, a dense, bluish-grey metal that's notoriously hard to machine, a task made harder still by the Inflection's curvaceous architecture.

At the centre sits a solid 18k gold dial hand-finished in tremblage by engraving specialist Coralie Mercier, its grain-like texture catching light with every movement, taking its name, “Shuo” (sparkling, radiant), literally. In a surprisingly fun twist, this is the first time I have seen a so-called California or error-proof dial - which is typically split horizontally between Roman and Arabic numerals - with engraved, calligraphed Chinese numerals below instead.

Only fifty pieces will be made in total, with a customised Girard-Perregaux movement beneath, an unusual choice with a wildly organic rotor above the strong movement design with its wave-like décor. It is quite the investment, though, at CHF 33,800 excl. tax, and all 50 pieces are set for delivery in early 2027.

This Qatari independent brand has spent barely two years at Geneva Watch Days, and yet it has opened collectors’ eyes to something different and often octagonal, this summer marking its coming of age with a flagship boutique. It sits inside Doha's Mandarin Oriental hotel, potentially setting a trend that could reinvent the way we see the old-school glamour of hotel boutiques filled with the usual big-brand suspects. Beda’a has released two watches to celebrate, redesigning its trademark Angles collection with vertically brushed silver dials. This is a nod to the store's own décor, which also features octagonal door handles and boasts Breguet numerals and gilt hands.

On the dial, the crisp numerals appear blue, a result of a visual bleed from the textured blue leather strap, but are in fact black, and lend the octagonal case a classical, dressy face. Two movement options are available: an accessible quartz Angles 37 sans the tell-tale ticking seconds hand, alongside the hand-wound ETA 7001-powered Angles Mecaline, the latter adding a traditional small-seconds register at six.

CEO and artistic director Sohaib Maghnam keeps the geometric discipline that made the brand's name, with an architectural case that can remind us of a softer take on the strict geometry of Genta’s Octo, slim and quietly wearable. I will also admit to this being a watch I will invest in for myself, as it offers a very affordable combo of octagonal, vintage-esque charm with a nicely finished, tiered case that sparks conversation.