Description
When Breguet introduced the Tradition in 2005, it did something almost no modern Maison had dared: it flipped an 18th-century pocket watch architecture around and mounted it on the dial side, exposing the going train, the barrel, the pare-chute shock protection, and the half-moon oscillating weight for the world to see. For 21 years that gesture has defined the collection. Now, at Watches & Wonders 2026, Breguet is finally refreshing the Tradition line with five new references — two versions of a new Seconde Rétrograde 7037, a diamond-set 7038, a rose-gold 7097, and a platinum GMT 7067 with a green grand feu enamel dial that can be ordered with Eastern Arabic numerals.
This is not a redesign. The Tradition DNA is untouched. What has changed is the dial material, the movement finishing, the colourways, and — most importantly for a house obsessed with its own history — the quiet return of the grand feu enamel technique that Abraham-Louis Breguet himself used in his montres à tact and montres à souscription in the late 1700s. Same kiln. Same discipline. Two hundred and fifty years later.
Design
The Tradition has always been a watch that stares back at you. The going train sits on top, splayed across the dial in gleaming symmetry, while the small off-centre hours-and-minutes sub-dial at 12 o'clock feels almost apologetic about interrupting the view. That core layout survives 2026 intact. What Breguet has done is dress it up with four dramatically different moods.
The 7037 arrives in two flavours. The white-gold version ships with an entirely blue ALD-treated movement — a first for Breguet — paired with a pristine white grand feu enamel sub-dial and blue Breguet numerals. The platinum version is the opposite: a murdered-out Tradition with black-PVD movement, black grand feu enamel, black textured rubber strap. Same 38 mm fluted case with welded lugs. Radically different personalities.
The 7038 is the high-jewellery play. A 37 mm white-gold case with 58 brilliant-cut diamonds ringing the bezel, a crown set with a single watch-jewel cabochon, and — for the first time in the Tradition's history — a black aventurine glass dial dusted with silver-toned powdered transfers. It reads like a night sky with a movement floating in front of it.
The 7097 is the purist's choice: 40 mm rose gold, a white grand feu enamel sub-dial with blue Breguet numerals, and a new charcoal-grey barrel cover whose matte finish makes the rose-gilt gear train pop harder than it ever has. At CHF 43,200 it is also, paradoxically, the entry point to the new collection.
And then there is the 7067 GMT. A 40 mm platinum case, hand-wound calibre 507 DRF, and a main dial executed in a gradient green grand feu enamel — pine green at the centre bleeding into absolute black at the rim. Grand feu gradients are a genuinely hard problem: pigment, temperature, and firing time all have to stay under simultaneous control for the entire firing. Breguet has pulled it off. The 7067 also carries a small home-time sub-dial at 8 o'clock that can be specified with Eastern Arabic numerals — the same numeral style A.-L. Breguet offered his Ottoman Empire clients in the early 1800s. More on that below, because for our Arabic-reading audience this detail is the one that matters.
Specs
Ref. 7037 (Seconde Rétrograde) — White Gold / Platinum
| Case | 38 mm x 12.7 mm, 18k white gold OR 950 platinum, fluted with welded lugs |
| Dial | White grand feu enamel (white gold) / Black grand feu enamel (platinum), Breguet Arabic numerals |
| Movement | Calibre 505 SR, self-winding, 38 jewels. Blue ALD-treated bridges (WG) / Black PVD-coated (PT) |
| Frequency | 3 Hz (21,600 vph) |
| Power Reserve | 50 hours |
| Complications | Hours, minutes, retrograde small seconds |
| Water Resistance | 30 m |
| Strap | Textured rubber with light-grey stitching |
| Price | CHF 45,200 (white gold) / CHF 49,700 (platinum) |
Ref. 7038 (Seconde Rétrograde, Diamond-Set)
| Case | 37 mm x 11.6 mm, 18k white gold, bezel set with 58 brilliant-cut diamonds, crown set with a watch jewel |
| Dial | Black aventurine glass with silver-toned powdered transfers, Breguet Arabic numerals |
| Movement | Calibre 505 SR, self-winding, 38 jewels |
| Frequency | 3 Hz (21,600 vph) |
| Power Reserve | 50 hours |
| Complications | Hours, minutes, retrograde small seconds |
| Water Resistance | 30 m |
| Strap | Black satin-finish fabric with diamond-set pin buckle (25 diamonds) |
| Price | CHF 50,600 |
Ref. 7067 (GMT, Eastern Arabic Numerals option)
| Case | 40 mm x 12.1 mm, 950 platinum, fluted with welded lugs |
| Dial | Gradient green grand feu enamel (pine green to black), Breguet numerals. Home-time sub-dial at 8 o'clock available in Arabic OR Eastern Arabic numerals |
| Movement | Calibre 507 DRF, manually wound, 40 jewels |
| Frequency | 3 Hz (21,600 vph) |
| Power Reserve | 50 hours |
| Complications | Second time zone (GMT), day/night indicator |
| Water Resistance | 30 m |
| Strap | Black rubber with green stitching |
| Price | CHF 62,800 |
Ref. 7097 (Seconde Rétrograde, Rose Gold)
| Case | 40 mm x 11.8 mm, 18k rose gold, fluted with welded lugs |
| Dial | White grand feu enamel sub-dial with blue Breguet Arabic numerals, new charcoal-grey barrel cover, rose-gilt gear train |
| Movement | Calibre 505 SR1, self-winding, 38 jewels |
| Frequency | 3 Hz (21,600 vph) |
| Power Reserve | 50 hours |
| Complications | Hours, minutes, retrograde small seconds |
| Water Resistance | 30 m |
| Strap | Grey calfskin |
| Price | CHF 43,200 |
What's Exciting
Three things. First, the grand feu enamel. Breguet is bringing back a dial technique that Abraham-Louis used personally — a single mistake in the kiln and you start the dial over from raw copper, which is why almost nobody does grand feu at scale anymore. The fact that the 2026 collection leads with enamel rather than metal-stamped or lacquered dials is a quiet statement: Tradition means what the brand says it means.
Second, the green gradient on the 7067. Gradient grand feu enamel is on the absolute frontier of what master enamellers can do. Getting a steady, uninterrupted fade from pine green to total black across an entire dial — and landing every dial identically — is the kind of craft you only get when a Maison has decades of kiln time. For a Tradition, which usually whispers rather than shouts, a green dial is genuinely uncharacteristic. It works because the craft backs it up.
Third — and this is the one we find most moving — the Eastern Arabic numerals option on the 7067. In the early 1800s, A.-L. Breguet was already customising dials for Ottoman clients in the numeral system they could read. Two hundred years later, his Maison is doing the same thing, on the same technical base, and calling it out explicitly at Watches & Wonders. If you read these numerals natively, this isn't a marketing flourish. It is Breguet remembering who its friends were.
Nothing about this refresh is loud. Nothing is revolutionary. The calibres are the same 505 SR / 505 SR1 / 507 DRF family the line has run for years. But across five references, Breguet has done the thing that is almost impossible for a heritage Maison: moved forward without moving away.
Sources
- Breguet Official — Breguet continues the Tradition story
- Monochrome Watches — First Look: Breguet Tradition 2026, Five New References
- SJX Watches — A Fresh Palette for the Breguet Tradition
- Time and Watches — Breguet Tradition 7037, 7097, 7038 and GMT 7067
- Watch Collecting Lifestyle — Breguet Tradition Collection's Most Ambitious Update
- Oracle of Time — Breguet Expands Tradition with Seconde Rétrograde and GMT
- Free Press Journal — Breguet Refreshes Its Tradition Collection After 21 Years
History
Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823) is, by any honest accounting, one of the three most important horologists who have ever lived. The tourbillon, the pare-chute shock-protection system, the first wristwatch, the self-winding perpétuelle, the Breguet balance spring overcoil, the natural escapement, the sympathique clock — they all trace back to his workshop on the Quai de l'Horloge in Paris. Kings, empresses, sultans, and Napoleon himself bought his watches. For clients in the Ottoman Empire he routinely customised dials with Eastern Arabic numerals — the origin of the small but meaningful detail Breguet is reviving on the 7067 two centuries later.
Two of A.-L. Breguet's most beloved pieces were the montre à tact — a pocket watch that let you read the time by touch, for social situations where pulling a watch out was considered rude — and the montre à souscription, sold by subscription and built around a single symmetrical central hand and an elegantly laid-out going train visible through the movement side. Both used grand feu enamel dials. Both showcased the beautifully architected calibre that would one day inspire the modern Tradition.
That modern Tradition was introduced in 2005 with the reference 7027 — a hand-wound 37 mm piece that took the symmetry of the souscription and tact calibres and put the going train on the dial side, inverted, in a wristwatch case. For the first time, you could wear a late-1700s Breguet architecture on your wrist and watch it work. The 7027 was followed by a steady trickle of references over the next two decades, but the collection never received a full refresh — until Watches & Wonders 2026.
The 2026 update is, in that sense, the first real generational step the Tradition has taken since launch. It does not rewrite the architecture. It reaches back further — past 2005, past the 7027 — to the grand feu kiln and the Ottoman numerals, and pulls them forward into the present.
Gallery
Images to be added — 7037 white gold on wrist, 7037 platinum dial macro, 7038 diamond bezel macro, 7067 green enamel dial, 7067 Eastern Arabic numerals sub-dial detail, 7097 rose gold gear train, 505 SR movement side detail.
