MILAN — Rolex has done something collectors rarely expect from the notoriously deliberate Swiss watchmaker: it unveiled a major new model in September, months after the industry’s traditional Watches and Wonders launch season—and gave it a name borrowed directly from vintage-watch culture.
The Rolex Perpetual Padellone is a 39mm precious-metal dress watch equipped with an instantaneous annual calendar, moonphase display and entirely new Calibre 7190.
It is also a deliberate resurrection of one of the strangest and most coveted watches Rolex produced in the middle of the 20th century.
The inspiration is the Rolex Ref. 8171, a 38mm triple-calendar moonphase watch from the early 1950s that Italian collectors nicknamed Padellone—literally “large frying pan”—because its case looked unusually broad and flat for its era.
This time, Rolex itself is using the nickname.
And underneath the nostalgic styling sits one of the company’s more ambitious modern movements.
Rolex launched it when almost nobody expected another major 2026 watch
Rolex normally concentrates its biggest product introductions around Watches and Wonders in Geneva.
The Padellone broke that rhythm.
The watch was officially unveiled in Milan on September 15, 2026, making the release notable even before collectors began dissecting what was inside it. CNA Luxury described it as an unusually significant off-cycle announcement, while Hodinkee noted that surprise Rolex releases outside the main annual launch calendar are relatively uncommon.
Milan also carries historical symbolism.
The original Padellone nickname came from Italian collectors, and the city’s role in vintage watch collecting gives Rolex’s choice of launch venue an obvious connection to the model’s collector-driven identity.
The Financial Times reported that Rolex unveiled the watch at Milan’s historic Palazzo Serbelloni, as luxury-watch companies increasingly devote attention to the Italian city and its wealthy collector base.
The original Padellone was an unusual Rolex
What makes the Ref. 8171 so fascinating is that it does not fit neatly into the Rolex image that developed afterward.
Modern Rolex is closely associated with rugged Oyster watches such as the Submariner, GMT-Master, Explorer and Daytona.
The Ref. 8171 was different.
It displayed the day, date, month and phases of the moon, and unlike its Ref. 6062 sibling, it did not use Rolex’s waterproof Oyster case. Instead, it had a snap-on case back. Phillips describes the 8171 and 6062 as Rolex’s two vintage references combining a complete calendar with moonphase.
Its 38mm diameter was also exceptionally large for a wristwatch of its era.
That unusual size helped produce the Italian nickname that has survived for more than seven decades.
Hodinkee describes the Ref. 8171 as a particularly unconventional chapter in Rolex history: broad, relatively flat, complicated and aesthetically very different from the durable waterproof watches that eventually became the company’s signature.
Collectors turned the vintage watch into a six-figure—and sometimes seven-figure—prize
Original Ref. 8171 watches are now among the most prized vintage Rolex references.
Their value can vary dramatically depending on case material, condition, dial originality, provenance and accessories.
A stainless-steel Ref. 8171 sold at Christie’s New York in December 2013 for US$1.145 million, more than three times the upper end of its US$250,000-to-US$350,000 pre-sale estimate. Christie’s called it a world auction record for the reference at the time.
Other examples demonstrate just how wide the market can be.
Phillips sold a pink-gold 1951 example for CHF341,000, a particularly well-preserved yellow-gold Ref. 8171 for CHF980,000, and another stainless-steel example for CHF1.028 million. More recently, a stainless-steel example from collector Ben Clymer’s collection sold for US$203,200.
Those results should not be treated as a single market price. Vintage watches can trade at very different levels based on originality and condition.
But they explain why attaching the Padellone name to a modern production Rolex immediately caught collectors’ attention.
The new one is only 1mm larger
Rolex resisted the temptation to dramatically enlarge the original design.
The 2026 Perpetual Padellone measures 39mm across and 12.2mm thick, according to Hodinkee—only one millimeter wider than the approximately 38mm Ref. 8171.
The proportions may evoke the vintage model, but almost everything else has been modernized.
The old polished bezel has given way to a design with a domed upper section and finely fluted lower portion.
A sapphire crystal covers the dial, while another transparent sapphire section at the back exposes the movement.
And unlike the historically non-waterproof Ref. 8171, the new watch is rated to 50 meters of water resistance.
The moon is now made from meteorite
One of the watch’s most distinctive features sits at six o’clock.
The moonphase display uses a blue enamel disc covered with silver stars.
But the two celestial bodies shown on it are not merely painted circles.
Rolex says the full moon and new moon are fashioned from meteorite, with the new-moon element receiving a dark-blue PVD treatment. Both feature stylized faces that deliberately echo the whimsical moons used on vintage Rolex calendar watches.
The result is one of the least utilitarian-looking complications in the modern Rolex catalogue.
Above it, apertures beneath 12 o’clock display the day and month, while a blue central hand tipped with a crescent points to the date around the dial’s perimeter.
It looks historical.
Mechanically, it is anything but.
The original calendar needed regular correction. The new one remembers the month.
The biggest difference between the old and new Padellone lies beneath the dial.
The Ref. 8171 was a complete or triple calendar. Because the mechanism did not independently account for months of different lengths, owners had to make manual corrections more regularly.
The 2026 Padellone is an annual calendar.
Its mechanism automatically distinguishes between 30-day and 31-day months, meaning the calendar requires manual correction only once per year—when February becomes March.
Rolex calls the system Haplos.
Remarkably, Rolex says the calendar mechanism achieves this using only two components added to the date mechanism: an additional carrier finger and an annual lever.
The month programming itself is incorporated into the reverse of the month disc.
At midnight, another piece of theatre happens.
The date, day and month change simultaneously and instantaneously rather than gradually rolling over at different times. Rolex says it has filed a patent application covering that operation.
Calibre 7190 is protected by 30 patent applications
Driving all of this is the newly developed Calibre 7190.
Rolex says the movement is covered by 30 patent applications, two of them exclusive to this calibre.
Its architecture is related to Calibre 7135, introduced with the Land-Dweller in 2025.
Like that movement, the 7190 operates at an unusually high 5Hz frequency, or 36,000 vibrations per hour.
It also uses Rolex’s silicon Dynapulse escapement, a Syloxi silicon hairspring, a high-technology ceramic balance staff and optimized Paraflex shock absorbers. Rolex says the design improves energy efficiency while offering strong resistance to magnetic fields.
Despite the high frequency and calendar complication, Rolex claims approximately 66 hours of power reserve.
For buyers more interested in aesthetics than patents, the movement is visible through the case back and decorated with Rolex Côtes de Genève, plus a cut-out yellow-gold winding rotor.
Rolex is selling three versions
At launch, the Padellone comes in three configurations.
Two use 18-carat Everose gold with an intense white grained dial. One is fitted with a matte brown alligator strap; the more expensive version gets Rolex’s seven-element Settimo bracelet.
The third uses 950 platinum, Rolex’s characteristic ice-blue dial and a matte black alligator strap.
Hodinkee reported US retail prices of:
- US$59,000 — Everose gold on alligator leather
- US$66,200 — platinum on alligator leather
- US$72,800 — Everose gold on Settimo bracelet
Those are retail prices, not predictions of secondary-market values or availability. New Rolex models can be distributed gradually through authorized dealers, and actual access to particular references may vary by market.
There is another rarity hidden in the story: moonphase Rolexes barely exist
Rolex does not regularly produce moonphase watches.
After the Ref. 6062 disappeared in the early 1950s, the complication was absent from Rolex’s catalogue for decades.
It finally returned in 2017 on the Cellini Moonphase Ref. 50535. Hodinkee calculates that as a 64-year gap following the discontinuation of the Ref. 6062 in 1953.
CNA notes that the Cellini Moonphase was the most recent Rolex moonphase before the 2026 Padellone.
That scarcity gives the new release significance beyond its vintage nickname.
Rolex isn’t merely reviving a dial design.
It is again putting one of its least-common complications into regular production.
And this is only Rolex’s second modern annual-calendar family
Rolex already has one prominent annual calendar: the Sky-Dweller, introduced in 2012.
But the Padellone approaches the complication from almost the opposite direction.
The Sky-Dweller combines an annual calendar with a second time zone in a relatively bold Oyster case.
The Padellone puts the complication into a restrained precious-metal dress watch built around historical proportions and moonphase aesthetics.
Hodinkee describes the new model as only Rolex’s second annual-calendar model line, underscoring how unusual the complication remains within the brand’s modern catalogue.
It also signals what Rolex may be doing with the Perpetual collection
The bigger story may be the collection surrounding the watch.
Rolex created its modern Perpetual collection in 2023 with the 1908, which replaced the Cellini as the company’s main classical dress-watch family.
Until now, the 1908 had been relatively simple mechanically.
The Padellone changes that.
Rolex itself describes the watch as expanding the Perpetual collection into sophisticated calendar watchmaking, while Hodinkee views it as a major technical step for a collection that began only three years ago.
That raises an intriguing question for collectors.
If Rolex is now willing to mine its archives for something as unconventional as the Ref. 8171—and even adopt the nickname collectors gave it—other historically complicated Rolex watches may suddenly look more relevant.
The closely related Ref. 6062 is an obvious example.
There is no announced modern 6062 revival, however, and any suggestion that one will follow remains speculation.
The name may be as important as the watch
Rolex watches have accumulated an entire unofficial vocabulary over the decades.
Collectors talk about “Pepsi,” “Batman,” “Kermit,” “Paul Newman” and numerous other nicknames, none of which originated as formal model names.
The Padellone is different.
Rolex itself explicitly says the new model is named after Ref. 8171’s collector nickname.
Hodinkee described it as, to its knowledge, the first Rolex model whose actual commercial name comes directly from the collector nickname of an earlier reference.
That makes the launch an unusually direct acknowledgement of vintage Rolex culture.
For decades, collectors turned an obscure 1950s calendar watch into the “Padellone.”
Then they turned surviving examples into six- and seven-figure auction pieces.
Now Rolex has taken their nickname, engineered an entirely new annual calendar around it, placed meteorite moons on the dial—and officially brought the frying pan back.
Leave a Reply