Four Rolex Watches We Love In 2026
A bumper year for Rolex fans marking the Oyster’s centenary, plus a surprise launch in September.
When the world’s most coveted watch brand celebrates its most remarkable invention, then springs an unexpected new collection once the confetti has settled, Rolex enthusiasts could be forgiven for feeling that Christmas came early and lasted all year.
First up: the 100th anniversary of the Oyster. To commemorate the collection that shaped the destinies of both Rolex and the wider watch industry, the watchmaking heavyweight marked the occasion the way it knows best—with a swathe of watches that turn up the heat on style, performance, and desirability.
Introduced in 1926, the Oyster announced its game-changing ambition with a case sealed against both water and dust.
Its timing came with its own set of challenges: most people still carried pocket watches, and regarded wristwatches as elegant but unreliable accessories.
The Rolex Oyster set non-negotiable standards for waterproofness and chronometric precision.
Through a series of widely publicised field tests (in 1927, the swimmer Mercedes Gleitze wore one across the English Channel) and constant innovation, the Oyster eventually redefined how a modern watch ought to look and perform.
Besides effecting a paradigm shift, the watch soon set non-negotiable standards for waterproofness and chronometric precision.
In 1931, Rolex introduced a self-winding system, the Perpetual rotor, to complete founder Hans Wilsdorf’s vision. That development gave rise to the ‘Oyster Perpetual’ prefix still seen on Rolex watches today.
Rolex enthusiasts could be forgiven for feeling that Christmas came early and lasted all year.
The Oyster Perpetual Explorer, Submariner, GMT-Master, and Cosmograph Daytona, along with the rest of the family, all stem from those epochal years. A century on, their modern iterations continue to express the same values of robustness, reliability, and precision, and have etched the Rolex name into popular consciousness as the world’s most desired watch marque.
Away from the Oyster Perpetual family, Rolex debuted the Perpetual Padellone in September. It is the second model to join the Perpetual collection of classically inspired dress watches, following the time-only Perpetual 1908 in 2023, and it carries the same stately sophistication while upping the ante with an annual calendar.
Without further ado, here are our Rolex picks to put your name down for before the year is out.
Oyster Perpetual Datejust 41
We are not prone to snap judgements at Opuleon. But seeing the Oyster Perpetual Datejust 41 in the flesh alongside the rest of Rolex’s class of 2026, we agreed immediately that it ranks top of our list.
It is all down to the dial. This new Datejust 41 in white Rolesor wears a green ombré dial that beckons like a temptress who knows she has you wrapped around her finger at first sight.
It is the first ombré dial coloured entirely in lacquer since Rolex brought the gradient back into its catalogue in 2019.
Green lacquer goes onto the base plate first; black is then sprayed in concentric passes to darken the edge, leaving the white printing and white gold Chromalight hour markers crisp against the colour.
Rolesor, the pairing of Oystersteel and gold, has been a Rolex signature since the early 1930s and was trademarked in 1933.
Here it takes the form of a fluted white gold bezel on an Oystersteel case, with an Oyster bracelet, Oysterclasp, and 5mm Easylink comfort extension.
Oyster Perpetual Yacht-Master II
Rolex launched the Yacht-Master II in 2007 as a regatta chronograph, built to count down the tense minutes before a starting gun.
The 2026 model (reference 126680) reworks the countdown so that programming, activation, on-the-fly synchronisation, stop, and reset all run through the two chronograph pushers.
The countdown hands now turn anticlockwise, so the time remaining reads the way a helmsman thinks about it.
The new calibre 4162 makes both changes possible and holds approximately 72 hours of power reserve.
As ever, the Yacht-Master II wears its sporting purpose with polish.
The 44mm Oystersteel case carries a bidirectional bezel with a blue Cerachrom insert, which frames a matt white lacquered dial. The result looks every bit the specialist’s instrument, with enough casual glamour to work as well on dry land as on deck.
Oyster Perpetual Day-Date 40
Introduced in 1956, the Day-Date was the first calendar wristwatch to spell out the day of the week in full, in an arc-shaped window at 12 o’clock.
Nicknamed the ‘presidents’ watch’, it has only ever been made in gold or platinum, and it is just as easily recognised by its three-piece semi-circular link bracelet, christened, as you might guess, the President bracelet.
This year’s reference 228235 JG gets an update befitting an anniversary year. The 40mm watch is crafted in Jubilee Gold, a new 18k alloy developed and produced entirely in-house, with a colour somewhere between yellow and rose gold.
Its warm sheen pairs beautifully with the dial, which is cut from light green aventurine, a natural stone of the quartz family.
For added sparkle, the dial carries 10 baguette-cut diamonds as hour markers.
Perpetual Padellone
The Perpetual Padellone’s September launch, well away from the bustle of Watches & Wonders in April, caught us by surprise.
It made a welcome change of pace for Rolex and its fans alike, with a watch that entices through old-world elegance and mechanical sophistication.
The Padellone takes its cue from reference 8171, a vintage complete calendar with moonphase that Rolex offered from the late 1940s to the early 1950s.
The 39mm modern version updates that vocabulary with exacting geometry and a harmonious play of fluid shapes and lines.
You can see it in the symmetrical dial layout, the domed and fluted bezel, the domed sapphire crystal, and the pairing of baton and Arabic hour markers.
It comes in three versions: Everose gold with an intense white dial on a Settimo bracelet or brown alligator strap, or platinum with an ice-blue dial on a black alligator strap.
The stateliness extends to the movement within, the high-frequency calibre 7190, which beats at 5Hz.
Its patented Haplos system tells 30-day months from 31-day ones, so the annual calendar needs correcting only once a year, when February turns to March.
The calendar displays are also instantaneous, with day, date, and month changing together at midnight. The moonphase, shown as a full moon and a new moon cut from meteorite, sits on a blue enamelled disc that completes one rotation every 29.53 days.