Tudor has thawed out one of its most quietly important watches. At Geneva Watch Days 2026, the brand brought back the Northflag, a model that first appeared in 2015 and then slipped out of the catalog, and gave it two meaningful upgrades: a GMT function and Master Chronometer certification. It’s a modest-looking watch with an outsized place in Tudor’s story.
Tudor relaunched the Northflag at Geneva Watch Days 2026 as a 40mm second-generation tool watch with a new integrated design, a GMT function, and METAS Master Chronometer certification, powered by the Manufacture Calibre MT5652-U with a 65-hour power reserve.
The Northflag matters more than its low profile suggests. When it launched in 2015, it was the first Tudor ever powered by an in-house Manufacture movement, a turning point for a brand long known for using outsourced calibers. Its design descends from the 1973 Ranger II, with an integrated bracelet that flows into the case, a black dial with large Arabic numerals, and an angled 24-hour rehaut. The name itself is a tribute: “North” refers to the British North Greenland Expedition of the 1950s, when Tudor watches spent two documented years on the wrists of adventurers on the Arctic ice sheet, cementing the brand’s bulletproof tool-watch reputation.
The second-generation Northflag keeps those lines but adds function. The most fitting addition is the GMT: a central 24-hour hand, which Tudor notes is especially useful in polar regions, where the midnight sun and the polar night can blur the line between day and night for months at a time. It’s a rare travel complication with a real on-the-ice rationale. The other upgrade is certification. The new Manufacture Caliber MT5652-U is a Master Chronometer, tested by the Swiss Federal Metrology Institute METAS to run within -0 to +5 seconds a day and resist magnetic fields up to 15,000 gauss, on top of its existing COSC chronometer rating. It carries a 65-hour, weekend-proof power reserve and a silicon balance spring, and it’s on view through the open caseback that was itself a Northflag first in 2015.
The rest is classic modern Tudor. The 40mm steel case wears large monobloc ceramic hour markers filled with Super-LumiNova, a cone-shaped screw-down crown, and a two-link integrated bracelet with Tudor’s T-fit clasp, a tool-free system offering five positions of on-the-fly adjustment. It is water-resistant to 100 meters, METAS-certified, and backed by Tudor’s five-year transferable guarantee, with no registration or mandatory servicing required.
