Patek Philippe’s WATCH ART Grand Exhibition Milano 2026 opened today at CityOval in Milan’s CityLife district, bringing together more than 500 watches, movements and objects across approximately 2,900 square metres.
We had the opportunity to visit the exhibition ahead of its public opening, spending several hours moving through its different rooms and discovering an exceptionally broad selection of contemporary watches, historical pieces, Rare Handcrafts and material from the manufacture’s archives.
Now in its seventh edition, WATCH ART has previously travelled to Dubai, Munich, London, New York, Singapore and Tokyo.
Milan marks the first time the exhibition has been held in Italy and, in terms of scale, is the largest edition to date.
The setting is CityOval, the restored building formerly known as the Palazzo delle Scintille, whose 30-metre-high dome provides a striking architectural backdrop.
Rather than presenting the watches as a conventional trade exhibition, the layout is designed as a sequence of environments that reconstruct different aspects of Patek Philippe’s world, from its Geneva locations to its workshops, museum and archives.
The first impression is deliberately theatrical, with references to Geneva appearing throughout the exhibition.
A sculpture measuring 9 meters high and 4.5 meters wide, composed of more than 2,000 translucent droplets, represents the “Jet d’Eau”, one of Geneva’s symbols.
Streets, architectural elements and installations evoke the city where Patek Philippe has been based since its foundation, while the different rooms gradually move from the current collection towards historical watches, technical subjects and decorative crafts.
The layout makes it possible to see the breadth of the collection without reducing the exhibition to a succession of display cases.
One of the central areas is devoted to the current collection. Here, the watches are arranged across the main families and complications, offering a useful overview of the present-day catalogue.
The selection ranges from the familiar Calatrava, Nautilus and Aquanaut designs to perpetual calendars, chronographs, minute repeaters and other complicated watches.
Seen together in one space, the collection reveals how differently Patek Philippe approaches watches at very different levels of complexity.
The Rare Handcrafts section changes the pace considerably.
Instead of focusing primarily on mechanical construction, the displays concentrate on techniques including miniature painting on enamel, cloisonné enamel, hand engraving, micro-wood marquetry, hand-executed guilloché and gem-setting.
Around 25 exceptional pieces created with Italian themes are presented, including wristwatches, pocket watches and clocks.
The Italian references are particularly effective here because they allow the crafts themselves to remain at the centre while connecting the objects to places, architecture and artistic traditions familiar to the exhibition’s Milanese audience.
The presence of artisans working in front of visitors adds another dimension to this section. Watching a craftsperson work on a dial or decorative element makes the considerable amount of manual intervention behind these objects easier to understand.
Another room takes the visitor into the manufacture itself, focusing on movements and the production of their components.
Movements are displayed alongside explanations of the stages involved in producing and finishing watch parts, while areas dedicated to research and development provide a glimpse into the technical work that precedes the final assembly of a calibre.
The possibility of speaking with engineers and specialists makes this section more than a static presentation and gives visitors the opportunity to ask about aspects of movement development that are normally hidden from view.
The historical section is particularly impressive. Around 80 pieces from the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva have travelled to Milan, bringing together objects from the museum’s Antique Collection and the Patek Philippe Collection.
The selection reaches from early watches and horological instruments to important examples from Patek Philippe’s own history. Among the highlights are the first known Patek Philippe perpetual calendar wristwatch from 1925, the 1948 World Time Ref. 1415 HU and a 1918 pocket watch with minute repeater and 30-day power reserve that once belonged to James Ward Packard.
The historical owners section adds a more personal dimension to this part of the exhibition. Watches associated with figures such as Queen Victoria and Pope Leo XIII are displayed alongside other objects connected to notable owners. These pieces provide a different way of looking at watch history, placing individual objects within the circumstances in which they were commissioned, presented or worn.
We also enjoyed the new area devoted to Patek Philippe’s historical archives. Documents and other material preserved by the manufacture are presented here, including items that have not previously been shown publicly.
For an exhibition otherwise dominated by finished watches, this section provides a useful reminder that the history of a watchmaker is also contained in drawings, correspondence, technical records and other documents that rarely leave the archive.
The section dedicated to complicated watches is naturally one of the exhibition’s major attractions. It brings together a wide selection of high-complexity timepieces, with a separate area devoted to supercomplications.
Among the pieces on display are the Calibre 89 and Star Caliber 2000, two landmarks in Patek Philippe’s history of complicated watchmaking.
The “Master of Sound” room concentrates on chiming watches. Here, the Grandmaster Chime, with its 20 complications, is displayed alongside other minute repeaters and chiming mechanisms, including the Sky Moon Tourbillon Ref. 6002R-001.
The atmosphere is noticeably different from the rest of the exhibition, and demonstrations by master watchmakers provide an opportunity to see some of these mechanisms being operated and explained rather than simply viewed through glass.
The Milan exhibition also provides the setting for the Milano Special Collection, seven limited editions created specifically for the Italian market.
The platinum Ref. 5978P-010 combines a manually wound chronograph with an instantaneous perpetual calendar, powered by the new Calibre CHR 29-535 PS QI.
The calendar indications are displayed through apertures, with the day and month at 12 o’clock and the date at 6 o’clock, while the platinum case and black dial give the technically complex watch a restrained appearance.
The Calatrava trio takes a more direct visual approach to the Italian connection. The three watches share a design inspired by the Ref. 6007 and are distinguished by green, white and red accents corresponding to the colours of the Italian flag: a perpetual calendar with a green dial and strap (Ref. 7147G-010), a Calatrava with a white dial and strap (Ref. 7007G-010), and a sporty minute repeater with a red lacquered dial and matching alligator leather (Ref. 7047G-010).
The two World Time Minute Repeaters, Refs. 5531G-012 and 5531G-013, feature cloisonné Grand Feu enamel scenes of Milan at the centre of their dials. One depicts the city by day and the other by night, surrounded by the World Time display and paired with the minute repeater mechanism.
A further highlight is the new Gondolo Ladies First collection, comprising six watches that reinterpret the cushion-shaped, Art Deco-influenced Gondolo design in a more contemporary and colourful form. The collection includes both precious-metal and gem-set versions, with softly rounded cases, articulated lugs and richly coloured dials and straps.
All six use quartz Calibre E15 movements, placing the emphasis on the case, dial and gem-setting rather than on mechanical complexity.
The Gondolo presentation also provides an interesting link with Patek Philippe’s more recent history. The collection recalls the Ladies First Chronograph introduced in 2009, when Patek Philippe presented its first in-house manually wound chronograph movement specifically in a women’s watch.
The new Gondolo Ladies First takes a different approach, combining jewellery-watch aesthetics with the practicality of a quartz movement.
After moving through the different sections, what remains most striking is the extraordinary range of objects on display, bringing together contemporary pieces, historical watches, museum items, complicated movements, decorative crafts, production techniques and archival material within the same space. It is an unusually comprehensive view of a watch manufacture, allowing connections between these diverse areas to become clearly visible.
For anyone passionate about fine watchmaking, it provides an unparalleled overview of Patek Philippe’s heritage, craftsmanship and design.
Further coverage of some of the new models presented in Milan will follow soon.
Patek Philippe WATCH ART Grand Exhibition Milano 2026
Open from Friday 2nd to Sunday 18th October 2026
CityOval - CityLife
Palazzo delle Scintille
Piazza Sei Febbraio, Milan, Italy
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