Rolex is celebrating a century of its most important invention, and it’s doing so in spectacular fashion.
In 2026, the Swiss watchmaker marks 100 years of the Oyster, the world’s first waterproof wristwatch, with a landmark travelling exhibition and a significantly upgraded quality standard.
The centrepiece of the celebrations is Oyster Story, a 23-minute documentary and major exhibition opening at the West Bund Dome in Shanghai on 10 June and running until 28 June.
The exhibition promises to be genuinely unmissable for anyone who cares about watches. It includes collector pieces, rare historic timepieces, immersive installations and the stories of the remarkable people who wore Oysters through history.
After Shanghai, the exhibition will tour around the world. Rolex hasn’t yet confirmed the full schedule.
Away from the exhibition, Rolex has made a significant announcement. The brand’s Superlative Chronometer certification, the guarantee of quality found on every Rolex, has been tightened for 2026.
It now includes three new testing criteria – resistance to magnetism, reliability, and overarching everything is a new sustainability criteria, embedded into the design and manufacturing process from the very start.
These join the existing standards introduced when the certification was last updated in 2015: precision, waterproofness, self-winding performance and power reserve. Those are tested on the finished watch.
The certification is controlled by independent Swiss organisations, not just Rolex itself.
It’s a meaningful upgrade, and arguably overdue. Magnetism resistance in particular has become increasingly important as everyday electronics grow more powerful (even most smartphones now have a really powerful magnet on the back).
These announcements come after the anniversary Oyster Perpetual in yellow Rolesor was launched at Watches and Wonders.
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