Czapek & Cie released its Watches and Wonders 2026 novelties today, ahead of the salon’s opening at Geneva’s Palexpo next Tuesday, 14th April. The three new limited-edition Antarctique models share a common thread, grade 5 titanium cases and the house’s proprietary Cosmic Blue, yet each occupies a completely distinct technical territory, underpinned by a different in-house calibre. Together, the Dark Sector, the Révélation, and the Tourbillon map the full arc of Czapek‘s manufacturing evolution since the Antarctique collection launched in 2020. Grade 5 titanium is expensive to refine and notoriously difficult to machine; Czapek deploys it across all three references simultaneously, which makes a clear statement about the brand’s current capabilities.
Antarctique Dark Sector Titanium Cosmic Blue
The Dial
On the Dark Sector, Metalem, Czapek’s long-standing dial specialist partner in Le Locle, constructs the base from brass and applies a velouté finish, a surface texture so dense and light-absorbing that the blue appears to carry genuine depth under almost any lighting condition. Two concentric circles in polished, slightly domed brass divide the dial surface and break at twelve equidistant points to mark each hour with a void rather than a solid index. This geometry draws directly from the SXH5 bridge architecture, so the dial and movement speak the same visual language. The sword-shaped hands in steel carry luminescent material and interact continuously with those voids: on the hour, the hour hand points into one; as the minutes and seconds advance, they cover and reveal each gap, generating subtle visual changes throughout the day.
Calibre SXH5
Calibre SXH5 was the first movement Czapek conceived, developed, and assembled entirely in-house, introduced in 2020 and still the emotional heart of the Antarctique collection. At 30mm in diameter and 4.2mm in height, it holds 193 parts across 28 jewels, runs at 4Hz (28,800 vph), and draws its energy from a single barrel delivering 60 hours of power reserve at a torque of 8.8 Nmm. The micro-rotor in recycled 950 platinum winds bidirectionally; platinum’s density ensures optimal rotational inertia in an extremely compact footprint. The variable-inertia balance wheel carries four gold inertia-blocks for regulation. On the finishing side, the seven skeletonised bridges, inspired by François Czapek’s 19th-century pocket watches, receive sandblasting for a matte contrast against the hand-bevelled and polished edges, with the central bridge executed in black-polished steel for a mirror effect.
The Case
The Dark Sector comes in two sizes: 40.5mm (44.5mm lug-to-lug, 10.6mm height) and 38.5mm ‘S’ (42.8mm lug-to-lug, 10.6mm height), both in grade 5 titanium. A box-shaped sapphire crystal sits above the dial with anti-reflective treatment, and the sapphire caseback, anti-reflective on the inner side, reveals SXH5’s architecture directly. Water resistance reaches 12 atm via a screwed-down crown. For the first time in the titanium Antarctique line, buyers can choose between a fully brushed integrated bracelet or a mixed brushed-and-polished finish for the C-shaped central links, a decision that changes the watch’s personality considerably under varied light. Czapek‘s ‘Easy Release’ system enables a tool-free swap to the included rubber strap, and a micro-adjustment clasp ensures a precise fit. Pricing sits at CHF 32,000 before taxes for both sizes, with the 40.5mm limited to 25 pieces and the 38.5mm ‘S’ to 10 pieces.
Antarctique Révélation Titanium Cosmic Blue
The Dial
The Révélation‘s dial works on fundamentally different logic. A metallic blue minutes track and a small-seconds track with circular satin finish sit peripherally, leaving the centre fully open to the movement beneath. The small-seconds sub-dial at 4:30 uses a smoked sapphire crystal disc, produced in collaboration with Metalem, so the display floats visually without creating opacity. The contrast between the rich blue peripheral tracks and the exposed mechanical components below serves as the primary legibility anchor, a genuine design challenge in any skeletonised watch, and one Czapek addresses by keeping the colour concentrated at the periphery where the hour and minute markings live.
Calibre SXH7
Calibre SXH7 shares SXH5’s 30mm diameter, 4.2mm height, 4Hz frequency, and 60-hour power reserve, and yet it achieves this with only 152 parts and 25 jewels. The reduction reflects full skeletonisation of the main plate, which creates a trompe l’oeil effect of multiple bridges echoing SXH5’s architecture when viewed from the dial side. Crucially, the entire calibre required complete re-engineering to reverse the escapement to the dial side, an idea born from a collector’s request to see what typically remains hidden. The stop-seconds mechanism now appears on the dial side as well, turning the act of setting the time into a visible mechanical event. Since the seconds hand could no longer bridge to the centre from above, Czapek relocated the small-seconds display to 4:30. The oscillating mass, now visible from both sides of the watch, receives full engraved decoration accordingly. Finishing follows the same vocabulary as SXH5: open ratchets, sandblasted black bridges, hand-chamfered angles, and straight-grained flanks.
The Case
The Révélation shares its case architecture with the Dark Sector: grade 5 titanium, available in 40.5mm (44.5mm lug-to-lug, 10.6mm height) and 38.5mm ‘S’ (42.8mm lug-to-lug, 10.6mm height), with 12 atm water resistance, a screwed-down crown, and identical bracelet options including the ‘Easy Release’ rubber strap swap. The sapphire box crystal and caseback both carry anti-reflective treatment. Production runs at up to 50 pieces per year for the 40.5mm and up to 25 pieces per year for the 38.5mm ‘S’. Pricing is CHF 42,000 before taxes for both sizes.
Antarctique Tourbillon Titanium Cosmic Blue
The Dial
The Tourbillon‘s dial reaches the highest level of craft in this trio. Metalem hand-guillochés the surface in the registered ‘Singularité’ pattern, a name drawn from the astronomical concept of singularity, those regions of space-time such as black holes where conventional physics breaks down, on a 401 ‘Secret Alloy’ base. A PVD treatment then lays the blue hue directly over that hand-worked texture, so the colour lives within the relief of the guilloché rather than over it. Rhodium-plated hour markers with SuperLuminova coating sit on a separate flange rather than on the dial surface, reinforcing the optical impression of infinite depth at the centre where the flying tourbillon, gear train, and open-worked barrel bridge align precisely on the vertical axis. The contrast between the long, slender gear train bridge’s hand-polished angles and the satin-finished arms of the tourbillon cage generates a constantly shifting play of light and shadow.
Calibre 9
Calibre 9 occupies a separate technical category. At 32.4mm in diameter with 191 parts and 20 jewels, it runs at 3Hz and stores 100 hours of power reserve. This was also the first Czapek calibre not only designed and developed in-house but largely machined in-house at La Chaux-de-Fonds. The flying tourbillon cage uses a finely machined convex titanium structure, and the anticlockwise crown wheel required the development of a new proprietary toothing. On the caseback side, the 5N 18k gold oscillating weight carries a hand-engraved black-hole motif by independent master engraver Michèle R., its convex surface worked freehand. Finishing on Calibre 9 includes openwork ratchets, sandblasted, blackened, satin-finished, and hand-bevelled bridges across six inward angles. Importantly, the hand-bevelling and sandblasting of the large central bridge that spans the dial now take place entirely in-house, a direct measure of how far Czapek’s La Chaux-de-Fonds manufacture has extended its capabilities, now producing roughly 70% of the calibre’s components internally.
The Case
The Tourbillon arrives only in 40.5mm, measuring 11.5mm in height with a 45mm lug-to-lug span, fractionally larger than the Dark Sector and Révélation in the same size to accommodate Calibre 9’s architecture. Grade 5 titanium, a box-shaped sapphire crystal with inner anti-reflective treatment, and a sapphire caseback with the same treatment are all consistent with the wider Antarctique family. Water resistance drops to 5 atm, consistent with the dial-side mechanical exposure. The same brushed or mixed-finish bracelet options apply, alongside the ‘Easy Release’ rubber strap swap and micro-adjustment clasp. The edition is strictly limited to 25 pieces at CHF 67,000 before taxes.
A Coherent Statement
Visitors to Watches and Wonders from 14th April will find three watches that read as a genuine family rather than a coincidental grouping. The Dark Sector at CHF 32,000 offers Calibre SXH5 at its most refined and most legible, and the 10-piece ‘S’ version makes it genuinely rare. The Révélation at CHF 42,000 gives Calibre SXH7’s unique reversed architecture its richest visual context to date, with Cosmic Blue intensifying the contrast between the mechanical components and the peripheral dial. The Tourbillon at CHF 67,000 represents the full extent of what Calibre 9 and the La Chaux-de-Fonds manufacture can deliver decoratively and technically. Czapek‘s commitment to the établissage model, building in-house capability progressively rather than abandoning specialist partners like Metalem, produces a coherence of quality that is difficult to achieve at this production scale, and the Cosmic Blue thread running across all three references turns what could have been three separate releases into a single, well-argued collection.
