Our Editor-at-Large Isabelle Junod met Jean-Christophe Babin, President of Geneva Watch Days, Bvlgari SpA Chairman and President of the Bvlgari Foundation for Arts, Education and Métiers d’Art, during the seventh edition of Geneva Watch Days, held from 2 to 6 September 2026 with 71 maisons across the city.
What the interview reveals: an event created in 2020 by eight maisons in a matter of days, whose contingency principles, flexibility, decentralisation, self-management and low cost, became its pillars; a stable base of around 300 retailers and sixty to seventy brands, now 71; a full public pavilion for the first time in 2026; and a president who intends to keep the event in Geneva for at least the next five years, as a platform and a megaphone for young brands that sit, in his words, in total complementarity with Watches and Wonders.
Geneva Watch Days at a Glance
- Founded in Geneva in 2020, on the initiative of Bvlgari, by eight maisons: Breitling, Bvlgari, De Bethune, Girard-Perregaux, H. Moser & Cie, MB&F, Ulysse Nardin and Urwerk; the only major physical watch event of that year, with 19 brands.
- Three principles: decentralised, with each maison hosting its own showroom in the hotels and spaces along the lake and a central Pavilion on the Rotonde du Mont-Blanc; independent, self-managed by the brands; open, free to the public for five days.
- Seventh edition from 2 to 6 September 2026: 71 maisons, more than 2,500 private clients and enthusiasts, more than 500 international media and content creators, after 66 maisons and 14,000 visitors in 2025.
- A programme of guided tours, watch panels, power breakfasts with CEOs, the COSC Precision Challenge and a charity auction with Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo, which raised CHF 115,500 on 3 September 2026 for the École d’Horlogerie de Genève.
- Presided since its creation by Jean-Christophe Babin.
Born in 2020, Built on Four Principles
Geneva Watch Days was created in 2020 by eight founding maisons in a matter of days. Seven editions later there are 71 brands. Has the event reached its final form, or is its DNA still evolving?
The driving principles we laid down to organise it, contingency drivers really: flexibility, decentralisation, self-management, low cost, continue to be factors of success. Without realising it, when we organised the event, we created a new concept: much more a celebration, where the transactional dimension still existed but was only one part, and where the cultural and educational dimensions were important, and are more important every year. The transactional side is stable: the number of retailers is stable at around 300; the number of brands has been stable at sixty to seventy for two or three years. What evolves every year is the cultural, sociological, philosophical dimension: more symposiums, more power breakfasts, more immersive experiences, chronometric contests, for instance, and kids’ contests to bring very young children to pay attention to watches.
So everything evolves year after year, but the pillars that make the concept work remain: decentralisation, self-management, a large space dedicated to young, small niche brands, and access costs customised to brand size: each brand contributes according to its means. All of that has stayed true, and it explains why Geneva Watch Days has become the other watch event, together with Watches and Wonders.
Each brand contributes according to its means.
Two Events in Geneva, 130 Brands
With Watches and Wonders in April and Geneva Watch Days in September, Geneva now welcomes around 130 exhibiting brands a year. How do the two events sit together?
In total complementarity. We have very good relations with Watches and Wonders; some brands, like Bulgari, take part in both. Structurally, Watches and Wonders welcomes the more institutional brands, most of them more than fifty or sixty years old, most of them above 150 or 200 million. We are the opposite: the majority of our brands are less than fifty, even less than twenty years old, and few make more than fifty or sixty million euros. So there is no competition at all. This one is more an incubator for tomorrow, and a great opportunity for collectors, who are always after novelties, not only the novelties of established brands, but the more surprising novelties that come more often from new brands. A new brand has to be different from the existing ones to succeed, otherwise nobody would buy it. This complementarity makes Geneva more and more desirable and appealing year after year: instead of 65 brands exhibiting, you have 65 on one side and 65 or 70 on the other, 130 in total. That enriches the landscape and gives the public and the stakeholders far more diversity, from the strongest institutions to the youngest, most surprising ideas.
A Full Pavilion for the Public
Some 14,000 visitors came in 2025, according to the association’s own count. This year, for the first time, the public has a full pavilion. What does that change?
That made a considerable difference. This year we go one step further: we have a full pavilion. Until last year, for space reasons, our public area was shared with all the other events, which forced us to limit public opening to about four hours in the Blue Box, which was only the showroom. Now the hours can run from 10 a.m. to 5 or 6 p.m., so we can attract far more public in a much more pleasurable, comfortable environment. Here the public can really breathe watches, enjoy the novelties, the atmosphere; it is like a cocoon, so different. I hope that thanks to this the public will be even larger, because the conditions have been totally improved to make it a true experience.
The President’s Two Hats
You have led Bulgari since 2013 and you now chair its board. How do you combine that with the presidency of Geneva Watch Days?
I have been president of the event for years, but it is true that with my new responsibilities at Bulgari I can dedicate more time, which I think is important to make sure Geneva Watch Days lives up to expectations that, from many stakeholders, are higher every year. We have to keep surprising: adding, enriching, raising the level of hospitality, of experience, of immersion.
How does a background at TAG Heuer and Bulgari, big-group experience, shape your vision as president of an event that champions diversity and independence?
I have known Baselworld, I have known Watches and Wonders, and I also visited the SIHH, so I am very familiar with the industry and with traditional watch fairs, their advantages, and their limits: fixed locations, and financing, because at the end someone has to pay. The rents are expensive, the space you pay for is expensive, you have to build the booth, and all of that is affordable for some brands and not for others. But those are the brands we need, because they represent a great many jobs, and, as you rightly say, out of the 71, maybe five or six or more will be big leaders twenty years down the road. So we have to give them a platform and a spotlight to showcase their creativity, their expertise, their mastery of micro-mechanics.
Having been an actor in watchmaking myself, not necessarily with small brands, but that does not matter, I have also led watch maisons within a large group, where smaller brands are present too. So, I am familiar with their limits and their priorities. Over the last twenty-five years I have been involved with small, medium-sized and very big brands, and I can perfectly put myself in the shoes of any brand present here.
Unimatic, the only Italian brand of the 71, told us that Geneva gave it a visibility it could find nowhere else. Is that the point?
Exactly: for many brands, Geneva is where awareness begins, including with collectors. Word of mouth is a very efficient process in terms of persuasion, and a gradual one in terms of broadening your base. Here, once a year, you can exhibit and mix with other brands, suppliers, retailers, press, collectors. It is a unique opportunity, and it is why we absolutely want the concept to remain a collective, community concept, not just a roof, with each brand organising its own event every evening. Then we would be back to existing formats, with no differentiation. As a watch event, like a brand, we must be different: that difference is our reason for being. And I think we truly are different: we are adding, not taking. We add more press and more depth, enriching Swiss watchmaking, which cannot be represented by one event alone; it needs at least two in Geneva. There are 400 brands registered with the federation; thanks to the two events, 130 can exhibit. One third, and room to grow.
Geneva First, for the Next Five Years
Geneva Watch Days has stayed in Geneva since 2020. Could you envisage extending it into the Middle East, through satellite events, partnerships or a regional programme, the way Art Basel went to Miami, Hong Kong and Paris?
I cannot exclude it. On the other hand, there is still so much to do in Geneva, and, as you rightly say, Dubai already has Dubai Watch Week. We also start to hear concerns that there are many events everywhere. For a journalist or a retailer it is one thing to come to Switzerland twice a year, because most of your business is Swiss watches; you take advantage of being here to visit brand X or brand Y, and it justifies the trip. If tomorrow there is a Geneva Watch Days in Geneva, then Dubai, then Tokyo, it becomes too much. If an organisation or brand wants to organise events abroad, fantastic, but we believe Geneva remains ideal, because beside the cultural dimension we can add the transactional one, and we can provide depth: the manufacture visits are among the most appreciated activities of Geneva Watch Days, and you can only do that because you are in Geneva; even if the manufacture is two hours’ drive away, it is not a big deal. In Tokyo, by definition, it can only be transactional. So the focus should remain predominantly or exclusively on Geneva, at least for the next five years. But that is a collective decision, discussed with the board we have created, the steering committee. We debated it and agreed that even if it could be a good idea, it was too early, given the many initiatives we see here and there.
Who sits on the steering committee?
Brands: Breitling, most of the founding brands, and some newcomers, to create a balance, and a balance between brands with a larger audience and smaller ones. Only members of Geneva Watch Days.
Forty Million Watches, Nine Billion People
When you took over TAG Heuer in 2000 there was no digital, no social media. How has it changed the way you work, and how important is it today with Gen Z?
First, it allows much broader diffusion, which is good for an industry that is relatively contained: we are talking about 40 million pieces in a world of virtually nine billion people. Before digital, reaching the radar screen required great effort from this industry. With digital, access to the radar is much easier: it is more a matter of creativity than of finance. Digital is a cost, but by far a lower one than the traditional media or the traditional events created to build awareness and desirability. So digital is particularly helpful to small industries, and ours is a small industry, luxury. It is clearly an accelerator of visibility, awareness, knowledge. People discover a watch on Instagram or TikTok, go further on the brand’s website, and eventually go to a store. The entry possibilities into the market have increased exponentially thanks to digital, whether it comes from the brand or from the events. You have probably seen many posts from Geneva Watch Days recently, on our own channels, to the benefit of all brands; and then the brands individually create content because they take part. It goes fast.
So Geneva Watch Days is a megaphone?
Consider Geneva Watch Days as a platform and a megaphone for our members, an amplifier.
Consider Geneva Watch Days as a platform and a megaphone for our members, an amplifier.
Interview by Isabelle Junod, Editor-at-Large, for WATCHESPEDIA, Geneva Watch Days, September 2026. Photographs © WATCHESPEDIA.
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