For over three decades, Roger Dubuis has carved a singular voice in fine watchmaking—a position that CEO David Chaumet is now taking deliberate care to fortify
When David Chaumet stepped into his new office at Roger Dubuis in the summer of 2024, he was walking into territories both familiar and uncharted. More than five years had passed since he last worked there—a place where he had called home for over a decade—and now that he was back as its CEO, Chaumet found himself helming a young and dynamic watchmaking house at the cusp of a new dawn.
“Oftentimes new CEOs say they spend a certain number of days to understand the brand and such. But I already had in-depth knowledge of Roger Dubuis, so it was a process of rediscovery more than anything else,” recalls Chaumet.
Having served as the company’s customer and quality service director, as well as overseeing the Western Europe and Asia-Pacific markets during his first stint between 2008 and 2019, Chaumet not only knew its ins and outs, but had gotten an intimate sense of what made Roger Dubuis tick.
During that time, Chaumet had the privilege of witnessing the passion and gravitas of the brand’s eponymous founder. The late Mr Dubuis, who started the brand in 1995 and almost singlehandedly launched it into the horological stratosphere to be in the company of contemporary watchmaking titans, had originally retired in 2010, but returned shortly after as an ambassador and technical adviser until his passing in 2017. And it was this front-row seat to Mr Dubuis that now underscores Chaumet’s decisions as he seeks to both reconnect Roger Dubuis with its DNA and shape its future.
“What is Roger Dubuis? It is a high-end Genevan watchmaking house that has always been very expressive—way more so than traditional watchmakers in Geneva. And this is something that we hope to strongly reinject into the maison,” says Chaumet.
Although the brand turns only 31 this year—an infant in horological years—Roger Dubuis is a supercharged watchmaking house that belies its age. Despite its youth, the brand is known for marching out connoisseur-level watches. From multi-tourbillons that whirl on the wrist like mini kinetic sculptures to highly artisanal dials that combine delicate, time-honoured decorative techniques, the watches explode with theatrical designs while showcasing top-drawer technical sophistication.
Every watch that comes out of its manufacture is marked with the Geneva Seal. A prestigious and rigorous certification that is awarded to fewer than one per cent of Swiss watches annually, it is a hallmark of the highest levels of horological craftsmanship and performance. That the Geneva Seal has now become—not an exception like with other brands—but an expectation with Roger Dubuis speaks of the brand’s watchmaking prowess.
Being Present
Given the formidable repertoire of timepieces and skill sets that Chaumet has to now steward, the soft-spoken CEO admits to having to strike a balance between evolution and continuity. Where Roger Dubuis had in previous years ventured farther afield into bolder expressions of its spirit—collaborations with Lamborghini and hypermodern iterations of its famed complications come to mind—Chaumet has taken a more considered approach rooted in the founder’s original vision, where horological exuberance is always thoughtful and never performative.
“It is not a rebuild, but a clarification of what we have always been doing,” he says. And the results of this clarification, evinced in last year’s releases that honed in on design codes and complications that took inspiration from Mr Dubuis’ favourite works, were again clear to see at Watches & Wonders 2026.
The show’s star novelty, the Excalibur Biretrograde Perpetual Calendar, is a showcase of the founder’s most cherished signatures. The perpetual calendar, for one, was among Mr Dubuis’ most beloved complications. And the biretrograde display, which he co-patented with Jean-Marc Wiederrecht as far back as 1989, has been a recurring aesthetic signature of the brand ever since its earliest watches. One can even go so far as to argue that the watch is a manifestation of founding principles.
At its heart is the new RD850 calibre that, as is the case with all Roger Dubuis’ movements, is built entirely in-house. What separates it from prior iterations is a quietly significant functional improvement: a dedicated month corrector that makes regulation both faster and more foolproof. Meanwhile, the astronomical moon phase exhibits both precision and poetry. Calibrated to the moon’s true orbital cycle of 29 days, 12 hours, and 45 minutes, it will remain accurate for some 122 years before requiring a single corrective click.
That is not a complication; that is a commitment. Throughout the watch, Roger Dubuis’ unique aesthetic vocabulary is writ large. The openworked dial unfolds across nine distinct layers in a new Astral Blue colourway—mother-of-pearl counters, an aventurine moon phase disc, an 18k pink gold moon laser-engraved for texture and depth. Across the movement’s bridges, inner angle finishing appears 14 times done entirely by hand.
The brand’s 2026 novelties collectively demonstrate that technical rigour and artistic imagination are mutually reinforcing virtues. The two new Excalibur Brocéliande models for women, for instance, take inspiration from the mythical forest of Brocéliande (the riding ground of the Knights of the Round Table) and imagine the forest at its most atmospheric.
Offered in Dawn Rose and Twilight Blue, colours that evoke those magical transitional hours, the watches’ sapphire dials feature hand-decorated foliage motifs rendered in gold, mother-of- pearl, and precious gemstones. Housed in a 38mm case, the dial comes alive with three rotating discs to recall the motion of branches stirred by wind. On the inside, the watch is driven by the high-performance RD721SQ, a skeletonised automatic calibre with 72-hour power reserve that is newly added to the Roger Dubuis catalogue.
Then there is the Excalibur Moonlight, a one-of-a-kind creation that emerges from Rarities, Roger Dubuis’ programme for bespoke and singular pieces. Housed in a 45mm titanium case with DLC treatment, it centres on a monotourbillon mounted at the heart of a deep-blue dial that reads like a celestial map—enamel discs hand-painted with zodiac constellations, moon phase indications rendered in Super-LumiNova, and a tourbillon cage engraved by hand at its centre. The watch, in many respects, offers one of the purest expressions of what Chaumet means by expressive watchmaking: technically superior, visually fearless, and creatively unencumbered.
“Ultimately for me, it’s really about paying tribute to Mr Dubuis,” says Chaumet. “If he were present with us now, I’d hope that he would have been amazed by how inspired we are by what he did, and how we managed to keep the beauty of his spirit alive.”
This story first appeared in the June 2026 issue. Purchase it as a print or digital copy, or consider subscribing to us here
