Bad Watch Predictions for 2026

Every year at around this time, watch publications like to make predictions about what we’ll see over the course of the next twelve months. Personally, I really enjoy this type of content. It sets the stage for the year in an interesting way, and it also reveals something about whoever is making the prediction. Because at the end of the day, none of us really know anything. We’re all just throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping some of it will stick. 

Here at Worn & Wound we have a truly terrible track record on making predictions about what will come next in the watch industry. If you dig back into our podcast archive and look at our claims, you’ll see that we’ve been very wrong about watches from Tudor, Rolex, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and many more brands. Sometimes we’re a bit early – when you make a Pelagos GMT prediction every year, eventually you’re going to be right. 

This year, I’m embracing chaos. These predictions are kind of wild and don’t really make any sense. But in the spirit of a world where you can bet on literally anything, I’m giving watch enthusiasts who like long odds something to spin a dream or two on. 

Prediction: the tide finally turns on textile straps in a war torn world 

Let’s face it, folks: the world is on fire. Watches offer a respite from the insanity for many of us, the same way Sunday night HBO and mom’s meatloaf feel like a warm blanket when things get crazy. 

This feels like it might be the time when those lingering fantasies of military heroism conjured by strapping on a watch just feel a little too, I don’t know, close to home? If watches are an escape, or a bit of cosplay, will people really want to wear watches on mil-spec straps when the news features endless headlines about militaries doing things we may not like all over the world? It could be a similar fate for hardcore military pilot’s watches and the like. 

Not everyone looks at these things in the same way, of course. Sometimes a military inspired watch or strap is just an aesthetic choice. But to the extent that we project our view of the world by the watches we wear, it seems reasonable that anything associated with war and violence could be toned down a notch or two. 

Prediction: the watch podcast space finally becomes fully saturated when Kevin O’Leary launches his own podcast performed in character as the guy he plays in Marty Supreme 

I had a strange moment over the holiday break. On Christmas Eve, I headed to my local multiplex to see Marty Supreme, the new ping pong movie directed by Josh Safdie and starring Timothee Chalamet (that is a very weird sentence and I just want to acknowledge it). I had been looking forward to seeing it but was a little apprehensive knowing that Kevin O’Leary, Mr. Wonderful himself, also had a major role in the film. I’ll be honest, this guy has always kind of grated on me, and when I see him doing watch related content on any number of YouTube channels, I find myself rolling my eyes, asking “why?” and just generally fretting about the state of the hobby. 

But I have to admit, he was great in Marty Supreme. Cast as Milton Rockwell, a pen magnate, he’s a perfect heavy and foil for Chalamet’s Marty character. He is, at times, aloof and made to appear like a man who stumbled into his good fortune. But in some scenes, he’s genuinely intimidating. And as a non-actor, he’s always interesting to watch on screen. You get the sense that he’s kind of playing a version of himself, which is to say, a person who is tough to like, but compulsively watchable. 

So my prediction is that Kevin O’Leary joins the rest of us in the watch podcast space this year, but he does so as Milton Rockwell, who wears one watch on each wrist in Marty Supreme just as O’Leary does in real life. The Rockwell character is conceived as a brilliant marketer – he’ll get a microphone this year.

Prediction: Apple Launches a Mechanical Watch

Apple, who already makes the most popular watch in the world, will shock the industry with the launch of a mechanical timepiece in late 2026. It will be a showcase for the tech company’s experiments in artificial intelligence, which has been used to design the space age watch from the ground up. The movement will be of a completely new design never before conceived of by a human watchmaker, stunning the greatest horology scholars the world over.  

Apple CEO Tim Cook, who will step down after the launch, going out on the highest of high notes, will explain that this project was thirty years in the making, a dream of Steve Jobs from long ago, finally brought to fruition. All of the design work and components were handled in-house by Apple, in the United States, using state of the art additive manufacturing technologies. It’s a true US made, high end mechanical watch. 

The Wall Street Journal will refer to the mechanical Apple Watch as a sign that the Singularity is fast approaching. Tech writers agree it is perhaps the most significant, paradigm shifting product launch since the Model T. On Instagram, watch enthusiasts will agree, it is just too expensive.  

Prediction: Tudor finally releases a new edition of the Heritage Chronograph 

This is perhaps the craziest prediction of them all. Long discussed by collectors but never coming to market, Tudor finally unveils a new version of their popular Heritage Chronograph at Watches & Wonders 2026. 

It’s a near one to one recreation of the original, except of course that it’s a little bigger and a little thicker, as heritage reissues almost always are. It’s a big hit at the show with watch media and other members of the community. 

Unfortunately for Tudor, however, the watch does not sell particularly well once it hits retailer shelves. Based on a design from 1973, the Heritage Chronograph is simply too funky, too 70s, for the millennials who now drive the watch market. These children of the 80s and 90s want watches that remind them of their youth. Digital watches, bright colors, you get the idea. Tudor course corrects, and in the coming years unveil a series of ana-digi watches that cement the brand as the true inheritors of the Rolex spirit for a new generation of watch consumers.