Most centenaries in watchmaking are commemorations of a brand. The one Rolex is celebrating in 2026 is something rarer — the centenary of an idea.
In 1926, Hans Wilsdorf patented a wristwatch case sealed hermetically against water and dust, christened it the Oyster, and changed the trajectory of the wristwatch forever. Before the Oyster, the wristwatch was a fragile adaptation of pocket-watch mechanics, vulnerable to the elements and unsuited to active life. After it, the wristwatch became what it has been ever since: an everyday tool. The following year, Mercedes Gleitze swam the English Channel wearing an Oyster, and Wilsdorf had the proof he needed for an advertising campaign that essentially invented the modern sports watch.
A hundred years on, every Rolex wristwatch — and a great many wristwatches that are not Rolex — descends from that 1926 invention. So when Rolex chose to mark the anniversary at Watches and Wonders 2026, it did so where the original idea still lives most plainly: across the entire Oyster Perpetual line, the brand’s most foundational and least adorned collection.
The anniversary releases
Two pieces sit at the centre of the announcement. The Oyster Perpetual 41 Rolesor — reference 134303 — is the restrained heritage statement. Its 41mm Oystersteel case is paired with a yellow gold bezel and crown, a configuration Rolex calls Rolesor that recalls the two-tone “Bubbleback” Oyster models of the mid-century. The dial is slate-grey with green five-minute squares along the minute track and, in place of the usual Swiss Made signature at six o’clock, the words “100 Years.” Powered by the Calibre 3230 with approximately 70 hours of power reserve, it is the closest thing in the lineup to a direct nod to the 1926 original.
The Oyster Perpetual 36 with Jubilee Motif Dial — reference 126000 — is the opposite gesture. Same case, same movement, but a dial that spells the Rolex name in blocky letters across the entire surface, rendered in ten distinct colours of lacquer applied sequentially in ten separate operations. The Jubilee motif first appeared in the 1970s as a subdued single-tone pattern; this is its boldest expression in five decades. Neither watch is a limited edition, which is itself a statement — Rolex is treating the Oyster’s centenary not as a moment of scarcity but as a recalibration of the line itself.
Above these, in the Day-Date 40, sits a new proprietary alloy called Jubilee Gold. It reads somewhere between yellow and rose, lighter than either, and makes its debut on a Day-Date with a seafoam green Aventurine stone dial and baguette diamond hour markers. There is also a new Cosmograph Daytona in Rolesium with a white grand feu enamel dial, a fully reworked Yacht-Master II with a simplified regatta function, and — for the first time in the modern Oyster Perpetual line — fully gold versions in 28mm and 34mm with natural stone-accented lacquer dials.
The idea behind the celebration
It is the choice of vehicle that says the most. By marking the centenary across the Oyster Perpetual — Rolex’s entry collection, the line most closely tied to the original 1926 proposition — the brand has refused the obvious move of a limited-edition Submariner or a centenary Daytona. The Oyster Perpetual is where the architecture lives at its most undisguised: a screwed-down case, a Perpetual rotor, time-only hands, water resistance to 100 metres. Add complications and it becomes a Datejust, a Day-Date, a GMT. Strip them away and you have what Wilsdorf set out to make a hundred years ago: a watch you can wear to do anything.
The updated Superlative Chronometer certification announced alongside the releases — now incorporating new criteria for magnetism, reliability, and sustainability — extends the same logic. The Oyster case was, in 1926, a guarantee of integrity. A century later, the guarantees are stricter, the testing more rigorous, but the proposition is identical.
There is no rhetoric in any of this. Rolex does not, as a rule, deal in rhetoric. The watches arrived in Geneva, the green markers and Jubilee dial speak for themselves, and the centenary is observed in the way Rolex observes most things: by quietly extending the line and trusting the customer to understand.
A century from now, when the bicentenary comes, the Oyster will almost certainly still be there. That is the kind of bet Wilsdorf made in 1926, and it has held remarkably well.
Explore the Oyster centenary collection on the official website.
Source of the image: rolex.com
