One of watchmaking history’s most riveting sagas, the Bulgari Octo Finissimo’s battle for the prestige of being the world’s thinnest mechanical watch has resulted in 10 world records over 11 years.
The Bulgari Octo Finissimo is a collection of ultra-thin watches launched in 2014 that set 10 world records over 11 years — including the world's thinnest tourbillon, minute repeater, automatic, and mechanical watch (the 1.70mm Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC) — establishing Bulgari as a leading watchmaker.
A high-octane race to engineer ever-thinner timepieces, this headline-grabbing epic not only immortalized the Octo Finissimo, but created an aura that elevated Bulgari’s broader watchmaking ambitions. Once primarily known as a jewelry maison, Bulgari established itself as a formidable watchmaker through the passion and perseverance poured into the Octo Finissimo.
Founded in 1884, the Roman jewelry house had already accumulated a century of watchmaking history, with icons such as the Serpenti (1948), Bulgari Roma (1975) and Bulgari Bulgari (1977) cementing its horological credentials.
When LVMH announced its acquisition of Bulgari in March 2011 for approximately US$5.2 billion, it brought the Italian maison into the world’s largest luxury group. The deal saw Bulgari’s controlling family shareholders exchange their stake for LVMH shares, while LVMH subsequently acquired the remaining publicly held shares.
Just three years later, Bulgari launched the Octo Finissimo, and with it, a new chapter in its watchmaking story. Thanks to Bulgari’s July 2000 acquisition of the Gérald Genta and Daniel Roth brands from The Hour Glass, the stars aligned to give the new collection Genta’s famous octagon-in-a-circle case design.
At Baselworld 2014, the accompanying Octo Finissimo Tourbillon immediately set the collection’s first world record: its 1.95mm-thick BVL 268 caliber was the world’s thinnest tourbillon movement.
Watch fans remained glued to the Octo Finissimo story for the next decade because every new record demanded Bulgari rethink the conventions of mechanical watchmaking. The engineers integrated the caseback into the movement architecture, developed ultra-thin differentials and shock-absorbing systems to minimize disruptive vibrations in its delicate timepieces, and even used advanced electroforming techniques to create microscopic components. Bulgari constantly and quite literally reinvented the wheel to stay ahead of ultra-thin competitors like Piaget and Richard Mille.
11 Years, 10 World Records
Following 2014’s record-breaking tourbillon, Bulgari unveiled the world’s thinnest minute repeater in 2016. The Octo Finissimo Répétition Minutes measured just 6.85mm thick, with its BVL 362 movement measuring 3.12mm. The following year, the Octo Finissimo Automatic became the world’s thinnest self-winding watch at 5.15mm thick.
In 2018, the Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Automatic combined two of watchmaking’s greatest challenges, becoming the world’s thinnest automatic tourbillon, at just 3.95mm thick.
Bulgari then broadened its record-breaking campaign even further. The Octo Finissimo Chronograph GMT arrived in 2019 at just 6.90mm, making it the world’s thinnest self-winding watch equipped with both a chronograph and GMT function.
In 2020 came the Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Chronograph, a 7.40mm-thick automatic watch combining a single-pusher chronograph with a tourbillon. Its BVL 388 caliber measured just 3.50mm thick.
The following year, Bulgari squeezed a perpetual calendar into the Finissimo’s wafer-thin architecture. The resulting Octo Finissimo Perpetual Calendar measured just 5.80mm thick, with its BVL 305 caliber measuring 2.75mm.
By this point, Bulgari had accumulated seven world records across seven different categories. Then, in 2022, it went after the ultimate prize.
The Octo Finissimo Ultra measured just 1.80mm thick, making it the world’s thinnest mechanical watch and giving Bulgari its eighth world record. Achieving this required the engineers to reconsider virtually every element of the watch, but Bulgari’s reign lasted only a few months.
Four months later in July 2022, Richard Mille unveiled the RM UP-01 Ferrari, measuring 1.75mm and taking the title of world’s thinnest mechanical watch. Bulgari wasn’t finished.
At Watches and Wonders 2024, the maison struck back with the Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC. At just 1.70mm thick, it reclaimed the title of world’s thinnest mechanical watch while simultaneously becoming the world’s thinnest COSC-certified chronometer. Its 170-component, manually wound BVL 180 caliber is mounted onto a tungsten carbide caseback that doubles as the movement’s mainplate. The watch is also capable of resisting shocks and magnetic fields despite its extraordinary thinness. Limited to just 20 pieces, it demonstrated that Bulgari wasn’t merely chasing a smaller number on a specification sheet: it was trying to make an ultra-thin watch function more like a conventional mechanical timepiece.
In 2025, Bulgari pushed the boundary once again, with the Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon that brought a skeletonized flying tourbillon into a watch measuring just 1.85mm thick. Powered by the manually wound BVF 900 caliber, the watch managed to combine the architectural transparency of a skeletonised movement with the extreme thinness that had defined the dynasty.
Unlike the 2022 Ultra, this latest achievement did not reclaim the overall title of world’s thinnest mechanical watch—the 1.70mm Ultra COSC remains thinner. Instead, the Ultra Tourbillon set a new record for the world’s thinnest tourbillon watch, bringing the Octo Finissimo’s extraordinary record tally to 10.
The race may have begun as a battle to shave fractions of a millimeter from a watch, but the Octo Finissimo’s significance goes far beyond its dimensions. Over 11 years, Bulgari has used extreme thinness as a laboratory for rethinking everything from movement architecture and materials to winding systems and case construction.
And that may ultimately be the collection’s greatest achievement: the Octo Finissimo didn’t merely make Bulgari’s watches thinner. It made Bulgari’s watchmaking impossible to ignore.
Bulgari’s pursuit of miniaturization has not ended with the record-breaking Ultra series. In 2026, the maison introduced the Octo Finissimo 37mm, shrinking its signature octagonal design while developing an entirely new 2.35mm-thick BVF 100 automatic caliber with a platinum micro-rotor and a 72-hour power reserve. The watch measures 6.45mm thick overall—nowhere near the record-setting dimensions of the Ultra, but considerably more practical as an everyday watch.
The patented technology developed along the Octo Finissimo’s remarkable odyssey continues to power the new 37mm renditions, along with several eye-catching limited editions.
Tadao Ando
The Octo Finissimo has proved an unusually receptive canvas for artists and architects. Its first major artistic collaboration came in 2019, when Bulgari teamed up with Japanese architect Tadao Ando on a Japan-exclusive Octo Finissimo Automatic, limited to 200 pieces. Ando replaced conventional hour markers with a hypnotic spiral radiating from the small-seconds hand, inspired by a black hole, the ripples of water and his concept of infinite time. A second, even rarer version followed: an Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Automatic limited to just eight pieces. In 2021, the collaboration returned with a 160-piece ceramic edition, whose blue lacqauered dial was embellished with a gold crescent moon inspired by mikazuki, the first light after darkness.
Sejima
In 2022, Bulgari invited Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima to give the Octo Finissimo a surreal makeover. Limited to 360 pieces, the Sejima Edition was entirely mirror-polished, causing its case, bracelet and dial to reflect their surroundings. Sejima drew inspiration from the reflective trains she designed for Japan’s Seibu Railway, while the sapphire caseback bears her signature. The result is an unusually self-effacing luxury watch: rather than drawing attention to its octagonal architecture, it seems to disappear into whatever happens to be around it.
Tattoo
For something considerably more rebellious, Bulgari turned to tattoo artist Mo Coppoletta and Parisian retailer Chronopassion. The first Octo Finissimo Tattoo Aria, launched in 2021, was limited to just 10 pieces and laser-engraved across its titanium case, bracelet and dial with Coppoletta’s cloudy, flowing motif. The follow-up Tattoo Acqua, launched in 2022, was limited to 30 pieces and represented the water element in Coppoletta’s planned four-element series. A third instalment, Tattoo Fuoco, arrived in 2023, this time rendered in rose gold and limited to just 15 pieces, with fiery motifs covering the case, bracelet and dial.
Sketch
Bulgari’s Sketch editions turn the design process itself into decoration. The concept first appeared in 2022, when the Octo Finissimo’s dials reproduced Product Creation Executive Director Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani’s original sketches of the watches’ movements. The initial 10th-anniversary editions comprised 200 pieces each of the Octo Finissimo Automatic and Chronograph GMT. Bulgari revisited the idea for its 140th anniversary in 2024, this time drawing the movement’s rear architecture on the dial as though the wearer were looking through the watch from the front. The resulting trio comprised steel automatic, rose gold automatic, and steel chronograph GMT limited editions.
Marble Only Watch
Perhaps the most literal artistic intervention came in 2023, when Bulgari created a unique Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Marble for the 10th edition of the Only Watch charity auction. Rather than merely coloring the dial, Bulgari used a slab of Verde di Alpi marble, quarried in Italy’s Aosta Valley, giving the watch an inherently one-of-a-kind appearance thanks to the stone’s natural veining. While this pièce unique was the first watch Bulgari ever produced using marble, its warm reception laid the groundwork for serially produced marble-dial Octo Finissimo references.
Phillips Sector Dial
Bulgari also handed the Octo Finissimo to the auction house Phillips, which in 2022 created a remarkably understated special edition in collaboration with Bacs & Russo. Limited to 50 pieces, the throwback titanium watch retained the Finissimo’s sandblasted aesthetic but replaced its usual dial with a sector-style dial featuring railway-track divisions. Most unusually, Phillips removed the small-seconds display altogether, making this the only Octo Finissimo without any subdials or complications.
Lee Ufan
In 2025, Bulgari collaborated with Korean-born artist Lee Ufan, whose philosophy provided the conceptual basis for one of the Octo Finissimo’s most unusual surface treatments. Limited to 150 pieces, the watch juxtaposes a mirror-effect dial with a hand-filed titanium case and bracelet. The contrast references two recurring elements in Ufan’s work: the solidity and limitations of a rock versus the limitless reflections of a mirror. Most unusually, each of the 150 watches received a unique hand-finished titanium surface treatment, meaning no two cases are exactly alike.
Laurent Grasso
Also in 2025, Bulgari collaborated with French conceptual artist Laurent Grasso on an Octo Finissimo that treats the dial like a piece of abstract art. Limited to 200 pieces, the watch combines a blue-PVD-coated titanium case and bracelet with a brass dial decorated using seven-pass serigraphy and metallic pigments. The multiple layers of printing create an intricate interplay of color and light, while the familiar 2.23mm-thick BVL 138 automatic movement continues Bulgari’s ultra-thin engineering tradition beneath it.
Today, the 1.65mm-thick Konstantin Chaykin ThinKing is the world’s thinnest mechanical watch. However, the Konstantin Chaykin ThinKing and Richard Mille UP-01 require external winding keys, while no Octo Finissimo watches do.
Furthermore, in the hotly contested arena of integrated-bracelet watches, the Octo Finissimo’s US$14,100 starting price is remarkably compelling for an ergonomic timepiece that embodies more than a decade of perseverance, ingenuity and relentless pursuit of the impossible.
