August is usually the quiet month for new watches. The Swiss industry shuts down and everyone heads off on holiday. Not this year. Between anniversary collections, motorsport tie-ins and a couple of genuinely left-field collaborations, there’s a huge amount to get through.
Here’s every new watch worth knowing about.
1. Omega Speedmaster 38mm
Omega has refreshed its compact Speedmaster 38mm line with seven new references, and the changes are more significant than they first look.
For a start, the oval subdials have been swapped for round ones, the dial text has been pared back, and the bezels are thicker to make space for the essential Dot-Over-Ninety. The 38mm model now looks just like a mini Moonwatch.
There’s real variety across the range too, from a steel-on-steel black dial model powered by the Calibre 3332, to bicolour options in 18K Moonshine and Sedna gold, right through to a pair of diamond-set bezels on ice blue and mother-of-pearl dials. Every reference comes on a five-link Moonwatch-style bracelet.
2. Christopher Ward C60 Trident Biscay
Christopher Ward has gone retro for its latest Trident, and the result is one of the most charming watches the brand has made in a while. Named after the notoriously choppy stretch of Atlantic between France and Spain, the Biscay collection trades the bulk of a modern tool watch for slimmer cases, box-domed crystals and a much more relaxed, mid-century feel (think Tudor Black Bay).
It lands in three flavours: Automatic, GMT and Bronze, the last of which uses a marine-grade aluminium-bronze alloy rather than the usual CuSn6, so it should age more gracefully than most bronze divers.
All three keep the 200m water resistance and COSC-certified movements, and the whole range uses Christopher Ward’s new iLink bracelet system, which lets you swap links without so much as a screwdriver.
3. Casio F-B100W
Not every watch needs a complex mechanical movement to be interesting, and the F-B100W proves it. It’s a classic Casio digital watch reborn with ‘Mobile Link’ connectivity, pairing to your phone over Bluetooth to sync the time automatically and pull step data from a built-in motion sensor onto the LCD screen.
The companion app handles the fiddly stuff, letting you tweak settings and check your activity without touching a button on the case.
It’s all wrapped in a slim resin shell with a vented strap. It looks so much like a F-91W, most people wouldn’t even know you’re wearing a fitness tracker.
4. Orient Star M45 F7 Small Second
Orient Star’s Classic Collection M45 gets three new additions, headlined by a 75th-anniversary limited edition finished in a stunning dark grey. The dual-layered dial keeps things nice and simple, just hour and minute hands, a power reserve indicator and small seconds, with a sandblasted finish across every element that’s intended to evoke stardust.
It features a compact 39mm stainless steel case that’s just 11.7mm thick. Inside is the in-house F7H44 automatic calibre, visible through a sapphire caseback on the anniversary piece, with a very solid 50 hour power reserve.
5. Seiko limited-edition Edo Purple collection
To mark 145 years of watchmaking, Seiko has built an entire limited-edition collection around Edo purple, a colour with roots in the Edo period that’s remained closely tied to Tokyo’s cultural identity ever since. It’s great storytelling that Seiko does so well.
Highlights include a purple-dialled Alpinist with a matching stitched strap, a Speedtimer solar chronograph with purple bezel accents (pictured), an Astron GPS Solar Dual-Time Chronograph with a dusk-inspired gradient dial, and a Presage Cocktail Time inspired by an actual cocktail called “Edo Purple.”
There’s even a revived Rotocall digital watch from the 1980s, now finished in black with a purple rotary switch. Every piece is marked “Limited Edition” on the caseback.
6. Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Tribute Enamel ‘Turner Series’
Jaeger-LeCoultre has created four Reverso Tribute Enamel watches, each with a miniature hand-painted reproduction of a J.M.W. Turner painting of Venice on the caseback, timed to coincide with the Homo Faber Biennale.
Each piece takes around 80 hours of enamelling work, uniting miniature painting, paillonné enamelling and hand-guillochage on dials that echo the colours of the paintings themselves. The guilloché patterns alone are engraved through hundreds of passes of a manually operated rose engine lathe.
With only 10 pieces made of each design, these are about as far from mass production as watchmaking gets.
7. IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team
IWC has unveiled its fourth official team watch for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, timed to the Singapore Grand Prix and the sport’s first night race at Marina Bay.
The standout feature is the dial – a deep, saturated purple that’s a first for IWC’s Pilot’s collection, inspired by Singapore’s national flower, the Vanda Miss Joaquim orchid.
The 41mm case is crafted from Grade 5 titanium, and the team’s signature Petronas green shows up in the luminescent hands and numerals for a striking contrast against that purple backdrop.
Power comes from IWC’s 69385 calibre, a column-wheel chronograph with a 46-hour power reserve, visible through a sapphire caseback.
8. Norqain Independence Skeleton Titanium Edition
Norqain has reworked its Independence Skeleton in full Grade 5 titanium for the first time ever, finished with a black DLC coating for a suitably stealthy look.
At just 82 grams, it wears far lighter than its openworked dial and 42mm case size might suggest.
The COSC-certified NB08S calibre is fully blacked out too, with red gold-plated indexes and hands providing the only real contrast against the skeletonised movement.
It’s rounded off with a black rubber strap in Norqain’s signature Milanese pattern, and a personalisable titanium plate on the case side.
9. Seiko Presage x Tradman’s Bonsai
Seiko’s collaboration with Japanese bonsai collective Tradman’s Bonsai is one of the more unusual releases this month, and it’s one of my favourite. Inspired by the crescent-shaped “moon” pot used in bonsai culture, the dial depicts a black pine bonsai under moonlight, finished in a deep green shade called Matsuba-Iro.
An embossed pattern on the dial mimics aged pine bark, while curved hands and a dual-curved sapphire crystal help catch the light across that textured surface.
The gold-plated case and bracelet contrast nicely with the green dial, and there’s an alternative strap embossed with a three-pronged pine motif for good measure.
Power comes from Seiko’s in-house 6R51 automatic calibre, with a healthy 72-hour reserve.
10. TAG Heuer Formula 1 Solargraph 38mm Orange
TAG Heuer has gone full Dutch for what will be the final Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, with two new limited editions of its 38mm Solargraph dressed in the orange that’s defined the circuit’s grandstands since the race returned to the calendar.
The sandblasted steel case houses TAG’s TH50-00 solar movement, which needs just a minute of direct sunlight for a full day’s power and can run for up to ten months in the dark once fully charged.
You can have it on an orange rubber strap, limited to 1500 pieces, or a sandblasted steel bracelet limited to 1000, both with a grey opaline dial and that same fiery orange-and-red detailing.
11. Seiko 5 Sports x Honda Motocompo Limited Edition
Time for one more Seiko? Of course there is. Marking 45 years since the Honda Motocompo first appeared, Seiko has built a 5 Sports watch entirely around the design language of that tiny, foldable scooter.
The 36mm case wears a bright yellow dial with bold black lines lifted straight from the Motocompo’s original colourway, complete with the Honda logo at 9 o’clock and “AUTOMATIC” rendered in Honda’s own typeface.
12. Panerai Luminor Marina 44mm Carbotech
Panerai’s new Luminor Marina PAM01707 pairs the brand’s unmistakable 1960s-inspired silhouette with Carbotech, a carbon-fibre and PEEK composite that’s 64-percent lighter than titanium and 80-percent lighter than steel.
The result is a 44mm case that wears far more comfortably than its size suggests, with a slightly different matt black finish on every single watch thanks to the way the material is cut.
Inside sits the P.9010 automatic calibre, offering a three-day power reserve from two series-connected barrels.
13. Seiko Power Design Project
Seiko’s annual Power Design Project exhibition returns to Japan House London for a third year, and this time it’s all about the components. Titled Passionately and Obsessively Crafted Watches, the 2026 edition gives Seiko’s in-house designers free rein to explore dial textures, hands and watch surfaces without the constraints of a commercial brief.
It’s worth stressing this isn’t a launch in the traditional sense, none of these pieces are going on sale, but as a showcase of the sheer inventiveness lurking inside Seiko’s design studios, it’s one of the more interesting things happening in watches this month.
The exhibition runs at Japan House London from 27 August to 15 September, with free admission.
Liked this? I swapped my Apple Watch for a mechanical watch 10 years ago, and I’ve never looked back
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