Hassan Akhras recently described how he told some watch collectors in 2015 that he was going to the first Dubai Watch Week. They had no idea what he was talking about.
“Ten years ago Dubai Watch Week was literally an unknown, new beast coming up,” said Mr. Akhras, founder of the online Arab Watch Guide. “It’s funny to see how it has evolved from being the small underdog to becoming one of the biggest fairs in the world.”
On Nov. 19, the biennial fair, often called D.W.W., is opening its seventh edition — but celebrating its 10th year as a free public event. It has a new location in Burj Park, a green space in the center of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and more than 90 brands are scheduled to show their products.
Adding some extra sparkle will be the 75th anniversary celebrations of Ahmed Seddiqi, the family-owned watch and jewelry business that has been a driving force behind the event since its start.
Hind Seddiqi, a granddaughter of the business’s founder and now the watch fair’s chief executive, told The New York Times in 2015: “Public demand to know more about the watch industry is now at its peak. Now is the right time for us to launch a platform such as Dubai Watch Week.”
Time seems to have proved that statement to be true. Mr. Akhras said the fair has had a “massive impact” on the interest in watches in the six countries, including the Emirates, that form the Gulf Cooperation Council (G.C.C.), a political, economic and military alliance.
“Dubai Watch Week has created a lot of new watch lovers because of the spectrum, platform and opportunities of the event,” he said. ”There’s a new generation of young watch enthusiasts that was brought up through the platform. It really put the Arabs and their collecting patterns and experiences on the map, which was not there 10 years ago.”
Statistics tell a similar story. The value of Swiss watch exports to the Emirates alone has grown to 1.27 billion Swiss francs (about $1.57 billion) in 2024 from 951 million Swiss francs in 2015, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry. (Few Swiss watch brands disclose their revenue; the federation’s export numbers are generally considered an accurate indication of industry sales.)
And exports to the Middle East region as a whole rose 22 percent, to 2.5 billion Swiss francs, in the nine-year span.
Two years ago, Manuel Emch, a Swiss watchmaking veteran and a co-owner of the Louis Erard and Kollokium brands, moved to the Emirates’ capital, Abu Dhabi.
He was drawn by the region’s potential. “It’s interesting in terms of energy and development,” he said in a recent interview. “There’s a kind of geo-economical shift and the Middle East is very dynamic as a whole.”
The region’s location between Europe and Asia, where Mr. Emch regularly does business, makes it convenient now — and possibly even more so in the future, as he mentioned the market potential of Saudi Arabia and India. “These two names come up quite often as strategic future markets,” he said. “Dubai Watch Week is at the crossroads of these two very strong markets.”
At the Dubai fair, Mr. Emch said, Louis Erard plans to unveil what he called its key product of the year, a collaboration with the Russian watchmaker Konstantin Chaykin. And Kollokium, founded in 2020, is to make its fair debut. (Around a third of the brand’s sales are in the Middle East, Mr. Emch said.)
Regional Powerhouse
Kollokium is sold at Clé, a luxury watch and jewelry retailer in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. The store’s founder, Yasmine AlShathry, who this year will be attending her third Dubai fair, said Dubai is a powerful market that has influenced the knowledge and appreciation of watches in her country and in the Gulf region as a whole. “The G.C.C. is a very interconnected market when we look at business — even when we look at culture,” she said. “The fair has a direct impact on the region.”
In Oman, Nailesh Kanaksi Khimji, a director at the large conglomerate Khimji Ramdas, has arranged his first trip to the Dubai fair. As a fifth-generation member of the Khimji family, whose business distributes watches in Oman and India, he has been invited to the Seddiqi 75th anniversary gala the night before the fair’s opening. He also plans to meet with partner brands and to visit some of the independent brands at the fair.
“We are in expansion mode in India,” he said. “I feel the independents could do really well there.”
Inviting and Engaging
Organizers and brands alike say the key to the Dubai fair’s success has been its noncommercial nature: Admission is free and it does not allow watch sales. (Other major shows, including Watches and Wonders Geneva, LVMH Watch Week and the Hong Kong Watch and Clock Fair, are primarily invitation-only trade gatherings.)
“Brands come to tell a story. They’re not there to meet targets,” said Ms. Seddiqi, who works with the Dubai Department of Economy & Tourism, the Dubai Culture & Arts Authority and the Dubai Mall to organize the event. “We want it to be inviting and engaging.”
This approach resonates with collectors from around the world, she said, and this year watch clubs from Amsterdam, Britain, Hong Kong and the United States are scheduled to attend.
Patrick Pruniaux, the chief executive of the Sowind Group, which owns Ulysse Nardin and Girard-Perregaux — agreed that the event “is not about being transactional, but having the opportunity to mingle and discuss with end-consumers and passionate collectors.”
This year, Ulysse Nardin is using the fair to unveil its first-ever collaboration, a complicated timepiece created with the independent watchmaker Urwerk that features a three-hour rotating carousel cage, which combats the effects of gravity on timekeeping accuracy, and an hour satellite display, in which the hour numerals appear on small cubes that rotate around the dial like satellites orbiting a planet.
The Swiss watchmaker Biver said it plans to introduce 11 new models: two with enamel dials and nine featuring unusual stone dials, including lavender jade and mahogany obsidian. James Marks, the brand’s chief executive, wrote in an email that Dubai has “evolved as a global hub for high-net-worth individuals who appreciate artistic luxury. This collaboration speaks to new markets — including women — while our dedication to traditional craftsmanship continues to resonate with horology enthusiasts.”
Other brands plan to highlight the Seddiqi anniversary. That business, founded in 1950 by Ahmed Qassim Seddiqi, now represents more than 100 watches and jewelry brands in more than 50 locations in the Emirates. In October, it expanded into Saudi Arabia with the retailer’s first stand-alone boutique in the country, featuring more than 25 watch and jewelry brands.
The Belgian watchmaker Ressence has said it will showcase the four collaborations it created for the retailer over the past six years. The most recent piece featured a dial that the brand said was made of sand collected from the desert dunes of each of the seven Emirates, a nod to the hourglasses once used in the region to tell time.
Other Seddiqi-linked introductions include three one-of-a-kind titanium designs from HYT Watches and a special anniversary piece from Breitling, the company that has appeared at the fair since its inception and is building a larger pavilion this year. Its chief executive, Georges Kern, wrote in an email that the Middle East is a “strategically important” market for the brand, producing 8 percent of its global business.
Different Views
The fair’s move from the Dubai International Finance Center to Burj Park, adjacent to Dubai Mall and at the foot of the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa, has allowed it to boost the number of participating brands by more than a third, to more than 90 from the 63 that showed in 2023.
And organizers expect visitor numbers will easily exceed the 23,000 total from 2023, too. “We’re going from the financial district to downtown — where there’s more shopping and F&B [food and beverage], the Burj Khalifa and the dancing fountains,” Ms. Seddiqi said. “The views will be different from what everybody’s used to, but still very beautiful. It’s another side of Dubai.”
With more than 50 programs on its calendar, she said, the fair is continuing its signature focus on education, dialogue and community building. For example, Hermès is staging a workshop on leather marquetry rather than having a branded booth. (In alternate years, when the fair is not held, organizers stage Horology Forum, a series of panel discussions held in locations other than Dubai; the 2024 forum was in Hong Kong.)
Panel speakers scheduled this year include Alexia Genta, the daughter of Gerald Genta, the designer known for the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, the Patek Philippe Nautilus and other influential models.
Ms. Genta — who, along with her mother, Evelyne, founded the Gerald Genta Heritage Association to protect the designer’s legacy after his death in 2011 — said she would discuss her father’s life and experience. “It’s good to remind people that there was an artist at the root of so many of these designs,” she said, “that it was not a commercially driven endeavor but really one searching for beauty.”
It is likely the state of the industry will be on attendees’ minds though, especially as global Swiss watch exports declined 16.5 percent year over year in August and an additional 3 percent in September, driven, at least in part, by the effects of President Trump’s 39 percent tariff on Swiss goods, including watches. The United States has been the Swiss industry’s top market in recent years. (On Friday, the Switzerland announced it had reached an agreement reducing the U.S. tariff to 15 percent.)
Two sessions at the fair will focus on the industry. The first is a keynote conversation between Jean-Frédéric Dufour, Rolex’s chief executive, and Abdul Hamied Seddiqi, the chairman of Seddiqi Holding, the parent company of Ahmed Seddiqi. The session is to be livestreamed on YouTube and while Mr. Dufour represents Rolex, Ms. Seddiqi said, “it’s not a Rolex moment, it’s an industry moment.”
The second will be a round-table discussion of chief executives from Breitling, Audemars Piguet, Chopard and Hublot.
In addition to a panel on innovation, Audemars Piguet is sponsoring a talk-show-style event featuring John Mayer, the musician and watch collector who holds a unique title of creative conduit for the brand; and Serena Williams, who has been a brand ambassador since 2014.
The host will be Wei Koh, the founder of the watch media company Revolution Media and the host of “Man of the Hour,” a watch documentary series that debuted on the Discovery Channel this month in some Asia markets and is scheduled on Discovery Plus in January in the United States.
“Dubai Watch Week has been the greatest driver of growth in the region in terms of watch culture,” said Mr. Koh, who also is to host a panel with representatives of three of the series’s subjects: the independent brands Chopard, Akrivia and MB&F.
The fair’s calendar this year also reaches beyond the watch industry to include two Arabic-language panels on family-run businesses. According to a report by KPMG, 90 percent of the Emirates’ private sector is composed of family-owned businesses, which employ more than 70 percent of the work force and contribute almost 40 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
“It’s quite an important topic for the U.A.E., but also the G.C.C.,” said Ms Seddiqi, who added that she hopes the panel — in the full spirit of the fair — will foster dialogue, both inside and outside the watch industry.
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