Description
Urwerk doesn't really do jewellery. Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei built their entire universe on mechanical strangeness — satellite hours, orbiting hour capsules, movements that look like dark matter sculpted into metal. So when these two decide to set 214 diamonds into a watch, you pay attention. The new UR-101 Diamond Sky is a 25-piece limited edition unveiled for Watches & Wonders 2026, and it takes Urwerk's most wearable watch and turns its upper architecture into a celestial canopy.
The UR-101 is the brand's most accessible and compact satellite-hours watch — 41mm, 9.33mm thick, steel, with a curved profile that actually sits against the wrist. For the Diamond Sky edition, Urwerk mechanically engraves a geometric grid of intersecting lines across the upper surface of the case, and at every intersection — every crossing point — they set a diamond. 214 of them. D-E-F, VVS, responsibly sourced, totalling 1.63 carats, arranged in a hexagonal pattern that covers the entire upper field. The result is a star map. As the wrist moves, light fractures and scatters across the field like constellations in perpetual motion. Underneath, Urwerk's signature wandering hour satellites continue their quiet orbit along the 180-degree minute arc. Poetry and precision, wrist-mounted.
Design
What's brilliant about the Diamond Sky is how restrained it is by high-jewellery standards. Urwerk didn't just blanket the case in random pavé — they engineered a grid. Mechanically engraved intersecting lines form a geometric net across the top of the steel case, and a diamond sits at every crossing. Hexagonal arrangement. 214 stones. It looks like a technical drawing of the night sky, which is exactly the point. This is jewellery filtered through the mind of an engineer.
The case itself is classic modern UR-101: 41mm in diameter, just 9.33mm thick, with short integrated lugs and a domed, glare-proofed sapphire crystal arching over the wandering-hours display. The crown sits at 12 o'clock — a signature position that traces directly back to the very first UR-101 of 1997 — with a back puller mechanism. Underneath the arc of sapphire, two satellites carrying hour numerals travel a 180-degree minute track from left to right. As one hour finishes its arc, the next one flyback-snaps into position in under a second. It's the most hypnotic way to read time ever invented, and here you're reading it beneath a field of stars.
The watch is worn on a textured white rubber strap with black calfskin lining, closed with a steel pin buckle — a deliberately sporty, modern counterpoint to all those diamonds. Urwerk could have gone full jewellery-watch with an alligator strap and a folding clasp. They didn't. The Diamond Sky is still a watch you wear, not a watch you display.
Specs
| Brand | Urwerk |
| Model | UR-101 Diamond Sky |
| Case Material | Stainless steel with mechanical engraving |
| Diameter | 41 mm |
| Thickness | 9.33 mm |
| Crystal | Domed, glare-proofed sapphire |
| Gem-Setting | 214 diamonds (D-E-F, VVS), 1.63 carats total, responsibly sourced, hexagonal constellation layout |
| Water Resistance | 30 metres (3 ATM) |
| Crown | 12 o'clock, back-puller |
| Movement | Calibre UR-1.01V, automatic, based on a Vaucher movement with in-house wandering hours module |
| Frequency | 28,800 vph (4 Hz) |
| Jewels | 28 |
| Power Reserve | 48 hours |
| Finishing | Sandblasted, snailed, and satin-brushed; brass, copper and ARCAP P40 components |
| Display | Wandering hours: two rotating satellites over a 180-degree minute arc |
| Strap | Textured white rubber with black calfskin lining, steel pin buckle |
| Limited Edition | 25 pieces |
| Price | CHF 85,000 (excl. taxes) — approx. USD 116,000 |
| Unveiled | April 8, 2026, Watches & Wonders |
What's Exciting
Urwerk only makes about 150 watches a year across their entire catalogue, so a 25-piece run is a real slice of annual production. That alone makes the Diamond Sky a serious collector's object. But the story is bigger than scarcity. This is Urwerk — the most genuinely inventive independent brand in Switzerland, a house that has spent 29 years refusing to make anything normal — deciding, for the first time in a long time, to engage seriously with gem-setting. And instead of turning the UR-101 into a jewel, they turned it into a telescope. A star map you wear. Every diamond is anchored to a mechanical engraving, every crossing is mathematical, every stone has a job. The satellite hours keep rotating underneath the canopy — time orbits, literally. It's still an Urwerk, still a wandering-hours machine, still 9.33mm of curved steel that hugs the wrist. It just happens to be wearing the night sky. At CHF 85,000 for 25 pieces, this is not a watch most of us will ever touch, but it's exactly the kind of weirdo-poetic object that reminds you why independent watchmaking matters.
Sources
- Monochrome Watches — Introducing: The New Urwerk UR-101 Diamond Sky Edition
- Watch I Love — URWERK UR-101 Diamond Sky: When Satellites Travel Beneath 214 Stars
- A Timely Perspective — Meet the $116,000 Steel UR-101 Diamond Sky
- Urwerk Official — The History of Urwerk
- Monochrome Watches — Retrospective 1997–2023: The Entire Urwerk Collection
History
Urwerk was officially founded in 1997 by master watchmaker Felix Baumgartner, his brother Thomas Baumgartner, and artist-designer Martin Frei. The brand debuted at Baselworld 1997 with two watches — the UR-101 and the UR-102 — that immediately announced a new language in horology. These were the first modern watches with a wandering-hours display, a mechanism where rotating satellites carry hour numerals along a minute track instead of using traditional hands. The UR-102 in particular made Urwerk's name, and the complication has defined the brand ever since.
The idea wasn't invented from scratch. Felix Baumgartner grew up in Schaffhausen in a family of watchmakers — his father restored some of the most significant historical clocks in the world, including the 17th-century Night Clock built by the Campanus brothers (Giuseppe and Pier Tommaso Campani) for Pope Alexander VII, a remarkable timepiece that displayed hours via rotating discs visible through an aperture so the Pope could read the time in the dark. That mechanism — rotating hour carriers instead of fixed hands — lodged itself in young Felix's imagination, and decades later he and Martin Frei reinvented it as the wandering-hours satellite complication. Every Urwerk with orbiting hour capsules — from the UR-102 to the UR-103, UR-110, UR-202, UR-100V, and now the UR-101 Diamond Sky — is a direct mechanical descendant of a Baroque-era papal night clock. That's the kind of lineage that makes Urwerk impossible to copy.
Gallery
Images to be added — wrist shot of the diamond canopy, macro of the engraved grid and stone-setting, top-down view of the satellite hours display, case profile showing the 9.33mm thickness, detail of the 12 o'clock crown and back-puller.
