Roger Dubuis Unveils Excalibur Grande Complication for its 30th Anniversary

In 1995, after a long and prestigious career working with historic Swiss maisons including Longines and Patek Philippe, visionary watchmaker Roger Dubuis teamed up with Portuguese entrepreneur Carlos Dias to found the Roger Dubuis watch brand, one of the great horological success stories of the late-'90s-early-2000s mechanical-watch revival. While Roger Dubuis, the company, has gone through quite a few changes and evolutions since then — including its acquisition by Richemont in 2008 and its eponymous founder’s passing in 2017 — it continues to carry forth the spirit of bold, high-horology swagger that put it on the map in the early aughts. As exhibit A, let’s take the spectacular, ultra-exclusive timepiece Roger Dubuis has introduced at Watches & Wonders 2025 on the occasion of its 30th anniversary. The Excalibur Grande Complication, limited to just eight pieces worldwide, combines three of the most revered high complications — a perpetual calendar, a minute repeater, and a flying tourbillon — and combines them with the signature bi-retrograde timekeeping displays that are emblematic of the brand and its namesake.

To start with the perpetual calendar, which Roger Dubuis (the man) has claimed as his favorite complication, the one in this watch’s complex in-house Caliber RD118 stands apart from others with its use of the bi-retrograde arrangement of its calendar displays. The day and date appear on two large semicircular scales on either side of the partially openworked dial, indicated by skeletonized hands that make a semi-instantaneous jump back to their starting point when they reach the end of each scale (i.e., the end of the week and month). Tucked between these scales between 11 and 12 o’clock is a rotating disk for the month, and, next to that, a smaller disk for the leap-year. As with all perpetual calendars, it should not require readjustment until the year 2100 (and not after that until another 100 years have passed). The bi-retrograde design that underpins so much of the Roger Dubuis brand DNA is derived from a co-patented system that Dubuis developed back in the 1980s with another watchmaking legend, Jean–Marc Weiderrecht, founder of artisanal movement-maker Aghenor.

The watch’s minute repeater, activated by a pusher on the left-hand side of the case, is also unconventional in style; some, in fact, would have called it downright evil. The three-tone chime that rings the hour, minute, and quarter-hour is based on an arrangement known in medieval times as “the devil’s chord” or “diabolus in musica,” which was strictly prohibited in religious compositions and eventually contributed to the foundations of blues music. The dissonant chord, controlled by a feeler-spindle system that relays information from the cams to enable the hammers to strike the gongs, emits a low chime for the hour, a high pitch for the minute, and two tones for quarter hours. Roger Dubuis’s watchmakers have also included a security mechanism that requires the pusher to be pressed all the way in before the chimes activate, eliminating inadvertent harm to the mechanism by accidental triggering. 

Finally we come to the tourbillon. One can, of course, quibble about whether or not a tourbillon qualifies as a “complication” under the classical horological definition (and, in fact, even about the strictest definition of “grand complication,” which usually includes a split-seconds chronograph) — but it is indisputably a signature of high-watchmaking savoir faire and a longtime specialty of Roger Dubuis. In this timepiece, the tourbillon is designed in a “flying” construction, with the rotating cage anchored from below to allow a fuller front view of the dynamic mechanism. Located between 5 and 6 o’clock, its mirror-polished cage evokes the look of a Celtic cross and uses lightweight, non-magnetic titanium for its key components.

The movement that does all of this heavy lifting consists of no less than 684 individual pieces, their surfaces finished with the meticulous array of hand decoration required to earn the prestigious Poinçon de Genève, or Geneva Hallmark, a badge of honor that Roger Dubuis has long embraced for all of its movements. Self-winding by means of two micro-rotors that amass a power reserve of 60 hours, Caliber RD118 is housed in a 45mm pink gold case, crafted in the familiar style of Roger Dubuis’s flagship Excalibur collection, with its triple lugs and sharply notched bezel. A sapphire crystal in the caseback affords a view of the movement, and the watch integrates into a brown calf leather strap with a pink-gold pin buckle to match the case. If any of the eight pieces of this special anniversary edition are unclaimed by the end of Watches & Wonders week, the prices will be on request.