These Are The Watches That Timed It Right In 2025

This year, watches that do and say a lot scored big. From complex perpetual calendars to retro dual-timers, here we capture the versatile new timepieces leading the charge.

Whether it’s 2025’s three consecutive supermoons or just a horological muscle flex, moon phases are having a moment.

As Audemars Piguet toasts 150 years, it unveiled the Royal Oak Selfwinding Perpetual Calendar in a scaled-down 38mm size, bringing one of its most technical complications, including a day, date, month, and moon phase, to a broader range of wrist sizes. Vacheron Constantin’s hyped and highly complex 41mm Perpetual Calendar invites wearers to follow the moon’s romance with an enchanting maroon dial and star-studded moon phase accurate until the year 2100. And TAG Heuer channelled its ties to space exploration with the future-looking Carrera Astronomer, tracking the moon with an intergalactic rotating disk. With a host of highly tuned moon-tracking big guns, 2025 might just be remembered as the year horology looked lunar.

The dial is a core component of your watch. It’s not only key to its functionality but also how it looks. So it is nice to have a little fun with it.

A case in point is Zenith’s Chronomaster Original Triple Calendar. This year, the legacy watchmaker updated its hyper-functional grail (a tribute to the early El Primero, aka what is widely considered the first automatic chronograph) with a hypnotic lapis lazuli dial. Because when your chronograph is accurate to 1/10th of a second, you need something equally as noteworthy up top.

It’s not alone in intriguing dial stakes, either. Breitling’s link-up with Manchester City’s Erling Haaland resulted in a spaced-out meteorite dial edition of its Chronomat GMT. It is featured across platinum, gold, and stainless steel models, but it’s the latter where it really comes into its own, spicing up a durable, everyday-appropriate timepiece with out-of-this-world materials. On the other hand, if you’re playing with colour elsewhere, like on Hamilton’s new Khaki Aviation Pilot Pioneer Auto in Burgundy, a neutral off-white dial can help pare things back and increase your watch’s wearability. In short, pay attention and dial in.

First image: (top) Zenith Chronometer Original Triple Calendar; (bottom) Breitling Chronomat Automatic GMT 40 Erling Haaland

Second image: Hamilton Khaki Aviation Pilot Pioneer Auto 38mm

Watches and movement have always been connected. Whether that’s timepieces made for physical activity or simply the convenience of time-tracking while travelling from one place to another, the two are inseparable.

Take Dennison’s ALD Dual-Time. Two separate hour and minute hands on the same dial within a rounded rectangular case make for a fierce retro hit. It transports the wearer to the days when frequent flyers wore double-breasted suits, smoked on planes, and straddled multiple time zones on one watch. Cartier is looking upwards, too, with an update on the Santos, the brand’s flyboy wristwatch. The original Santos – the first modern men’s wristwatch – was made for Louis Cartier’s aviator friend Alberto Santos-Dumont. With a sleek black dial, coupled with highly legible Super-LumiNova hands, it’s under-the-suit stealth, with a slice of function when you need it.

On the other end of the movement spectrum, Omega’s Seamaster Diver 300M arrives on a slinky, mesh bracelet, nodding to the early age of sturdy dive watches. It’s a function-first beast, with a time-only display in keeping with the 1993 model. And this version sees striking orange applied to the central seconds hand and four quarter indices for legibility. The result? Something hardcore yet refined and designed to keep up. No matter your movement – be it a new city or new depths – sometimes, the classic way of doing things still proves best.