Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo is thrilled to welcome you to The New York Sessions, Spring 2026, Online Auction, running from 12:00 PM ET, Wednesday, 1 April, to 12:00 PM ET, Wednesday, 8 April. The sale features more than 60 high-end luxury wristwatches, ranging from A. Lange & Söhne and Breguet to Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe.
– By Logan Baker
Mechanical watchmaking has always treated complications as a kind of language.
For centuries, watchmakers have used gears, springs, and levers to translate the world around us into mechanical information: the passage of days and months, the position of the sun and moon, the split second between two racing horses, the shifting hours across continents.
What has changed in the 21st century is not the existence of these complications, but the way contemporary watchmakers choose to express them.
Modern complication design often begins with a familiar foundation. Perpetual calendars, chronographs, tourbillons, and astronomical indications have existed in wristwatches for generations. Yet the best modern examples rarely attempt to recreate the past exactly. Instead, brands reinterpret these ideas with new architecture, new materials, and occasionally entirely new ways of displaying information. The result is a generation of complicated watches that feel rooted in tradition while still unmistakably contemporary.
Consider the perpetual calendar, perhaps the most elegant expression of mechanical programming ever devised. The complication automatically accounts for the irregular lengths of months and the leap year cycle, requiring correction only once per century. Traditionally, this information appears across a dial through a familiar set of subdials.
Patek Philippe’s platinum Ref. 5236P approaches the problem differently. Its display aligns the day, date, and month across a single aperture at 12 o’clock, creating a clean, horizontal reading of the calendar that feels intuitive at a glance yet requires extraordinary mechanical coordination beneath the dial.
Elsewhere, perpetual calendars continue to evolve through design language rather than display mechanics.
The modern Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar in 18k pink gold demonstrates how a complication once associated primarily with classical dress watches can adapt seamlessly to a sport watch format. The Royal Oak’s integrated bracelet and sharply faceted case have long defined modern luxury sport watchmaking, and when paired with a perpetual calendar, the result feels both familiar and subtly subversive. It reflects a broader shift in collecting tastes, where increasingly complex complications live inside watches meant to be worn every day.
Of course, some watchmakers approach complications not by refining tradition but by pushing its limits. The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept GMT Tourbillon stands firmly in this camp. With its titanium case, black ceramic case architecture, and exposed movement, it presents complications as something structural rather than hidden. The tourbillon becomes part of the watch's visual landscape, while the GMT system introduces a clever crown-operated mechanism for adjusting the second time-zone.
Tourbillons, meanwhile, have become fertile ground for experimentation.
H. Moser & Cie’s Pioneer Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton reimagines the complication through architecture and perspective. Instead of presenting the tourbillon as a conventional rotating cage beneath the dial, Moser combines it with a cylindrical hairspring, allowing the oscillating balance to appear almost sculptural within the openworked movement.
Other watchmakers continue to explore the poetic side of complicated watchmaking.
Breguet’s perpetual calendar Ref. 5327 speaks directly to the brand’s historical language, with its guilloché dial, elegant case proportions, and classical arrangement of indications. It is a reminder that innovation does not always require reinvention. Sometimes the most compelling modern complication is simply the careful continuation of a tradition that already works beautifully.
Audemars Piguet’s Jules Audemars collection offers yet another perspective on how complications evolve. The Ref. 25873 combines a tourbillon, power-reserve indicator, and date display with an unusual automatic-winding system driven by a hammer mechanism rather than a conventional rotor.
The highly sophisticated Ref. 26003BC, on the other hand, layers together a perpetual calendar, equation of time, and sunrise and sunset indications tailored for a specific city. These watches reflect a moment in modern watchmaking when brands began exploring increasingly complex astronomical and mechanical displays, often within relatively restrained case designs.
Even complications that appear straightforward can carry surprising depth.
The Vacheron Constantin Traditionelle Day-Date Power Reserve offers a quietly satisfying combination of practical information, presented with the brand’s characteristic sense of balance and proportion. In a world of increasingly elaborate mechanisms, it serves as a reminder that complications need not always shout to be appreciated.
These watches reflect the remarkable diversity of modern complicated watchmaking. Some reinterpret classical complications through new displays. Others experiment with materials and architecture. Still others continue refining the aesthetics and mechanics of traditional designs. What unites them is the shared belief that the mechanical wristwatch still offers room for discovery.
That idea sits at the heart of contemporary horology.
The complications themselves are centuries old, yet each generation of watchmakers continues to find new ways to build them, display them, and ultimately rethink them. For collectors, that ongoing evolution is part of the fascination.
Every complicated watch tells two stories at once: the long history of the complication it carries, and the distinctly modern perspective of the watchmaker who chose to build it today.
You can view the complete Phillips New York Sessions, Spring 2026, Online Auction catalogue here.
About Phillips In Association With Bacs & Russo
The team of specialists at PHILLIPS Watches is dedicated to an uncompromised approach to quality, transparency, and client service. Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo holds the world record for the most successful watch auction, with its Geneva Watch Auction: XIV having realized $74.5 million in 2021. Over the course of 2021 and 2022, the company sold 100% of the watches offered, a first in the industry, resulting in the highest annual total in history across all the auction houses at $227 million.
About Logan Baker
Logan has spent the past ten years covering the watch industry from every angle. He joined Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo in early 2023 as Senior Editorial Manager, after previous roles at Hodinkee and WatchTime. Originally from Texas, he spent a decade in New York and now calls Geneva home.