Delving Into High Horology at the Decidedly Un-Swiss Dubai Watch Week

For the Dubai noob, the city quickly lives up to its reputation as a sparkling metropolis, its streets jammed with minty Lambos and Rolls Royce Phantoms. Now a hub of hospitality as well as a major shopping destination, the city has matured into a pivotal spot on the luxury lover’s world tour. So, you can bet it’s a great spot for watches too.

The Burj Khalifa, its most famous early landmark, rises 2,700 feet and change from what was once sand, towering over the center of downtown Dubai. The park laid out around its base is the new site of the city’s Dubai Watch Week, a gathering of watchmakers and collectors unlike any other on the watch circuit. The event showcases 90 brands in a purpose-built, 18,000 square-meter venue. Despite the expansiveness of the location, what is immediately striking about DWW is the size of the exhibitors’ open booths—small by comparison to those imposing edifices at Watches and Wonders, which convenes annually in Geneva. But in Dubai that relatively small scale is a strength; it makes for an intimate and accessible affair, despite almost 50,000 visitors over the five days.

Dubai Watch Week at night.

Dubai Watch Week has a festival atmosphere, like a superannuated State Fair. But the party vibe belies the seriousness of the enterprise. It was founded by Ahmed Seddiqi and Sons, a prominent middle eastern watch retailer, initially as a non-commercial show to inform and delight collectors. Now in its tenth year and seventh edition, its growing reputation means it attracts a who’s-who of Swiss and global watchmaking, here in part for its location in the center of the burgeoning middle eastern watch market. It’s a convenient hop from many growing Asian watch markets, too.

Timing is also key. Staging the show in mid-November, effectively at the other end of the year from Geneva, means that watch brands can reveal exclusive editions and newer iterations to an enthusiastic audience. Critically, it’s also a great place to talk about watches in a relaxed setting—and one that’s open to the public for free throughout—so it’s a meeting point important enough to attract the rock stars of watchmaking, from Rolex CEO Jean-Frédéric Dufour to Audemars Piguet’s Ilaria Resta, Chopard’s co-president Karl-Friedrich Sheufele, Hublot’s Julien Tornare, and Breitling’s Georges Kern. They rubbed shoulders at round tables with leading independents like MB&F, Rexhep Rexhepi, and other brands that, though small in scale, are big on kudos amongst collectors. All the round tables can be viewed on Dubai Watch Week’s YouTube channel.

Audemars Piguet’s futuristic watch box.

Highlights launched at Dubai include a mind-bending, AI-driven robotic watch box designed expressly to keep Audemars Piguet’s 41mm Perpetual Calendar permanently up to date. Pop your Perp in the box and it detects any of the multiple complications that need correcting and adjusts accordingly; something for the person who has everything (including evidently, an AP Perpetual Calendar).

At Parmigiani Fleurier, meanwhile, Dubai was the occasion to release a new version of its Tonda Minute Rattrapante, a deceptively simple (and we think rather civilized) timing device that allows you to time an activity by countdown through two separate minute hands set at the push of a button. When not in use, the timing hand vanishes beneath the regular running minute hand.

The Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda Minute Rattrapante.

As one of watchmaking’s much-loved contemporary independents, meanwhile, H.Moser & Cie. continues to charm with special editions like the Dubai-released Streamliner Perpetual Moon Meteorite, which features a sleek modern case in steel with a restrained display of time and moonphase against a dial made of treated Namibian meteorite.

If numbers are any guide at Dubai Watch Week, the almost 50k visitors this year represent a 113 percent increase versus the last edition in 2023. Twenty-nine new brands joined the fray in 2025. Location, timing, and—critically—the general vibe of this unique showcase prompted many to wonder when this biennial fair will go annual. As of now, the next edition is in 2027.

The H.Moser & Cie. Streamliner Perpetual Moon Meteorite.

There are plenty of other attractions in Dubai when you’re not looking at watches, not the least of them Dubai Mall—the world’s most-visited shopping space—which features 1.2 million square meters of luxury stores and restaurants. Outdoors, if proof were needed that the car is king in Dubai, the same week saw crowds thronging over three evenings to the fifth edition of Icons of Porsche, an expansive outdoor showcase of privately-owned Porsches, many of them limited editions or made full bespoke at the auto brand’s Stuttgart HQ and shipped in from elsewhere in the Middle East for the show. Here, of course, the 911 is king, with row upon row of rare examples surrounded by well-to-do tire-kickers. Live official presentations of new models in the Porsche range only add to the excitement.

The Icons of Porsche event.

Where shopping and finance were the initial draw as Dubai exploded into its modern manifestation in the late 1990s, hospitality is increasingly Dubai’s USP, with premium hotels and restaurants vying to surpass each other in luxury and service. The Lana, part of the Dorchester Collection, is a relatively new addition to the Dubai hotel scene, opening in spring of 2024. The Foster and Partners-designed hotel stands slightly apart from the center of town and, being a little way off, is quieter and less flashy than some of its predecessors, priding itself on calm five-star service that feels old school but doesn’t look it.

The Lana hotel.

The Lana also has an astonishing view from its rooftop infinity pool on the 30th floor over the water of Marasi Bay Marina to the whole of downtown and, center stage, the Burj Khalifa. If you squint, you can almost see the collectors and power players at Dubai Watch Week going about their business. Almost.