Tudor 1926 Luna Review: A True Everyday Moon-Phase

When it debuted in the fall of 2025, the Tudor 1926 Luna took most of us by surprise. Tudor had spent the better part of the last decade focusing on the expansion of its fan-favorite sport-watch families, the Black Bay and Pelagos, adding not only new sizes and materials but useful complications like chronographs and GMT indications. Introducing a new complication into its dressy, affordable, and mostly under-the-enthusiast-radar 1926 collection was a rather bold move that few of the Rolex-owned brand’s loyalists saw coming, and yet in hindsight it was strategically astute. The complication itself — Tudor’s first-ever moon-phase — would have likely been out of place aesthetically in the vintage-dive-watch design language of the Black Bay, but it settles seamlessly into the more minimalist dial of the 1926, and simultaneously raises the profile of that collection in the overall market.

The 1926 collection takes its name from the year that Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf registered the brand name “Tudor” (though watches with that branding wouldn’t be released until 1946, making 2026 an anniversary of sorts, though not actually the centennial of Tudor as a watchmaking company) — and it is actually fairly vast, with more than 100 variations in four case sizes and numerous dial executions. It is positioned as Tudor’s most versatile collection and also perhaps its most “unisex” in appeal; notably, the 1926 is widely considered the most entry-level Tudor, with outsourced rather than in-house base calibers and MSRPs starting around $2,400 for the smallest and most uncomplicated models. Other than a date calendar, as in the watch pictured above, the 1926 line has not welcomed a horological complication into its fold until now. Here’s what you need to know about the 1926 Luna. 

The 316L stainless steel case of the 1926 Luna will hit a sweet spot for many wearers, at 39mm in diameter, 10.1mm high on the wrist, and spanning 47mm from lug to lug. Finding the exact right size for a moon-phase watch is tricky — it needs to be small enough to exude elegance yet large enough that the signature complication is both legible and prominently displayed — but Tudor seems to have found the happy medium here. Speaking of elegance, the case, the narrow, sloping bezel, and the lugs are almost fully polished, further separating the 1926 Luna from the Black Bay and its other tool-oriented cousins, which are predominantly brushed on their surfaces with polished highlights. The push-pull crown features a relief-engraved Tudor shield emblem, and it aids in this watch’s somewhat surprising 100-meter water resistance rating. 

This level of robustness, of course, is not common among dressy watches, including those equipped with a moon-phase complication, but it is consistent with the rest of the 1926 line, which Tudor, to be clear, doesn’t really regard as a “dress watch,” but as more of a “go-anywhere, do-anything” everyday timepiece. The screwed caseback, also somewhat unexpectedly for this type of watch, is solid and plain — just a ring of “Tudor Genève” engravings separated by the shield emblem, around a flat, brushed expanse — with no sapphire pane for viewing the movement. While not exuding luxury, this type of caseback helps to keep the overall profile of the watch thinner and also offers ample space for a personalized engraving, which, to many, might actually be preferable to a glimpse of the watch’s mechanical engine.

Tudor has rolled out the 1926 Luna with three distinctive dial treatments — blue, with silver-colored details like the hands, indexes, and hour numerals; black, with these details in gold tone; and the version that emerged from Tudor’s collaboration with Taiwanese singer-songwriter Jay Chou, a champagne-colored dial with an inky black “cloud” partially covering a gold moon disk. The blue and black dials depict this covering in silver and gold tones, respectively. On each model, the moon-phase aperture is framed by a polished bevel and dominates the lower half of the dial at the 6 o’clock position; the graphically depicted moon disk waxes and wanes against a starry backdrop that seamlessly carries on the main dial colorway.

The dials are slightly domed and sunray-finished, with a simple dotted minute track on their outer edge and alternating hour markers consisting of applied Arabic numerals at the even positions and faceted, arrowhead-style triangles at the odd. At 3 o’clock, Tudor has placed a simple date window (color-matched to the dial in the black-dial version), sans faceted frame. The hour and minute hands can be described as either sharply defined leaves or softly rounded swords, paired with a simple stick hand for the running seconds. All of the printed elements, i.e., the “Tudor Geneve” text and shield logo, are executed in the dial’s accent color. 

Like the simpler models in the 1926 collection, the 1926 Luna uses a Sellita-based movement as its mechanical motor rather than one of Tudor’s own in-house calibers — a decision made in service of maintaining the watches’ very value-conscious price points. In this case, it’s the Tudor Caliber T607-9, which is based on the Sellita SW280-1, one of the many descendants of the ubiquitous SW200, which adds a moon-phase function to the SW200’s basic, three-hand-date-tool kit. If you’re curious, only a handful of other watch brands are known to use this moon-phase-enhanced Sellita movement, either rebranded or not — among them Mühle Glashütte, in its Teutonia IV Moon Phase watch, and Raymond Weil (which calls it the RW 4280) in its Maestro Moon Phase. 

Caliber T607-9 features automatic winding (with a handwinding option), 26 jewels, and a beat rate of 28,800 vph, or 4 Hz. The power reserve is a decent but not-quite-weekend-proof 38 hours, and while the movement itself is “chronometer grade” (as per Sellita’s own grading system for accuracy), it does not actually carry a COSC chronometer certification, a hallmark of Tudor’s in-house calibers. Nevertheless, the movement is guaranteed by Sellita to achieve COSC’s own accuracy standards of -4/+6 seconds daily. Tudor has also given the movement its own array of decorative finishes, including machined striping, perlage, and gold-filled engraving, despite the fact that all of this embellishment is hidden behind the aforementioned solid caseback. 

Thus far, Tudor has outfitted all references of the 1926 Luna with its seven-link, stainless steel bracelet, with alternating brushed and polished finishes and a supple articulation that evokes its obvious inspiration, the famed Jubilee bracelet from big brother Rolex. The bracelet catches light in intriguing ways, with its vertical-brushed wide links and high-polished narrow links melding for a high-contrast appeal. The closure (again, with staying under a price ceiling in mind) is a milled, two-part folding clasp without push-buttons and offering no micro-adjustment. The Tudor name is etched into the clasp itself for a bit of discreet branding. 

All of the above, of course, brings us to the cost of admission to this moonlight serenade on the wrist. Tudor has priced all versions of the 1926 Luna at a rather eye-opening $3,000 — that’s an upcharge of less than $500 from your core 1926 time-and-date-only models in steel, and about $700 less than a similarly discrete complication, the day-date Tudor Royal (though, to be fair, that watch does carry an in-house movement rather than a modified Sellita). In the competitive arena of moon-phase watches with mechanical movements, it has few peers. Frederique Constant’s Heart Beat Moonphase Date, on a leather strap, squeaks under at $2,895 (though its open dial and pointer-date won’t be for everyone, and its water resistance is minimal); Longines’ Master Collection Moonphase offers a similar experience for $200 more, albeit with only 30 meters’ water resistance; and Raymond Weil’s Millésime Moonphase, a decidedly dressier, more minimalist option on a leather strap, comes in at $2,695 while offering half the water resistance of Tudor’s bracelet-mounted watch. All in all, it seems a substantial case can be made that Tudor has made the moon-phase watch for people who never thought they’d wear a moon-phase watch.

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