Watches & Wonders 2026: Tudor Looks Forward By Looking Back, With The Monarch

The original Tudor Monarch watches were in Tudor’s catalog in the 1990s and they were a collection a bit apart from the technical and sports watches which most of us think of when we think of Tudor today. At Watches & Wonders 2026, there were certainly plenty of updates to the mainstay sports watch collections, but the reboot of the Monarch caught a lot of people’s attention and was both unexpected, and unexpectedly refreshing.

The new Monarch, it must be said, is an heir to the originals more in name than in design (or in technical features, which we’ll get to in a moment.

Where the originals were essentially round dress watches which skewed slightly towards the sport-elegant side of things, the new Monarch is very much a modern watch, at least in terms of its use of vintage design cues in a modern context. By the numbers, this is a 39mm watch on a matching bracelet, with Tudor’s T-fit clasp; the movement is caliber MT5662-2U, with a specially designed rotor, and with a gear train which is designed to support a small seconds display (Tudor’s other watches, like most other modern watches, have a center seconds hand). The watch is Master Chronometer certified (for a refresh on the specific requirements, and how MC candidate watches are tested, check out our in depth look at Master Chronometer certification) which means the same thing here as it does in any of Tudor’s other Master Chronometer certified watches. This includes an independently monitored inspection regimen monitored by METAS, the Swiss Federal Institute of Metrology; resistance to magnetic fields as strong as 15,000 gauss; and both chronometric testing under MC standards (0/+5 seconds per day) and certification as a chronometer by the COSC.

The “error proof” dial, with its combination of Arabic and Roman numerals, is a look much further back than the 1990s – it was originally patented by Rolex during World War II and was intended to help prevent misreading of the time; that, along with the small seconds display and the openworked hands, gives the watch a deliberately anachronistic feel (helped along by the vertically brushed dial).

The sharply faceted case feels more contemporary than not (although there have certainly been such watch designs in the past, albeit they’re in the minority) but the hands are an interesting mix of anachronistic and modern design cues. Thanks to other vintage watch-adjacent features, like the dial and the small seconds, they almost read like cathedral-style hands, but after a little bit it dawns on you that they are actually snowflake hands – certainly something we all associate with Tudor – but with different proportions and without lume. (And this makes me think – again – what a hoot it would be if a brand released a retro vintage watch with actual radium lume. You could include a half-off hazmat disposal coupon).

In any case, the Monarch’s pretty sweet if you ask me – this style watch, but with Master Chronometer certification, isn’t something that comes along every day. Another example of the somewhat rare genre of watches with a cannily retro design, and a movement which is currently the last word in technical modern watchmaking.

The Tudor Monarch: Case, 39mm x 11.9mm thick, 46.2mm lug to lug; dark champagne dial with applied hour markers. Sapphire crystals front and back; water resistance 100M. Two link bracelet with T-Fit clasp. Movement, caliber MT5662-2U with small seconds; Master Chronometer certification; COSC chronometer certified; freesprung balance with silicon balance springs, running in 32 jewels at 28,800 vph. Price, $5875. 

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