Rolex does not make many complications, and it almost never makes a moonphase. So the arrival of the Perpetual Padellone, unveiled in Milan, counts as an event. It is a complete annual calendar, displaying the date, day, month, and moonphase alongside the time, and it is one of the most sophisticated watches the brand has ever produced, built on new technology and named after one of the most collectible Rolexes in history.
This is Rolex reminding everyone that it can play at the top of the complication game when it wants to. A complete annual calendar with a moonphase is territory the brand rarely enters, and doing it with a new escapement, a clever new calendar system, and a nod to one of its most legendary vintage references is a serious statement of intent. Between the Land-Dweller last year and the Padellone now, Rolex's Perpetual collection has quietly become the most interesting thing the brand is doing.
The Padellone borrows its name from reference 8171, a large complete-calendar watch Rolex made in the early 1950s that collectors nicknamed the “Padellone,” Italian for “big frying pan,” for its generous case. That reference is now among the most sought-after vintage Rolexes in existence, so reviving its name for a modern complete calendar with a moonphase is a deliberate, and confident, nod to the brand’s own history. The new watch joins the Perpetual collection, the higher-end classical line Rolex launched in 2023 with the 1908, and it is the first serious complication that line has received.
The Padellone’s dial is a study in restraint, given how much it displays. Most of it wears a grained finish with a fine satin edge, and a blue central hand tipped with a crescent moon points to the date around the periphery. The day and month appear in twin apertures at 12 o’clock, and at 6 o’clock sits a blue enamel moonphase disc that completes one rotation every 29.53 days, its full and new moons cut from meteorite, one of them treated with a dark blue coating, beneath pad-printed silver stars. The bezel is split, fluted below and domed above, and the whole thing measures a wearable 39mm.
Underneath is where Rolex made its statement. The new caliber 7190, exclusive to the Padellone, is covered by 30 patent applications and beats at an unusually fast 5 Hz. It descends from the caliber 7135 introduced on the 2025 Land-Dweller, and it shares that movement’s most important innovations: the Dynapulse escapement, a silicon, sequential-distribution escapement that is one of the few new escapement architectures Rolex has developed in decades, and a Syloxi silicon hairspring. The calendar itself runs on an entirely new system called Haplos, remarkable for its simplicity: it adds just two components to the date mechanism to recognize 30- and 31-day months, with the annual programming built into the back of the month disc. And in true grand-complication fashion, the date, day, and month all jump instantaneously at midnight.
The Padellone launches in three configurations. Two are 18-karat Everose gold with a grained intense-white dial, one on Rolex’s new seven-link Settimo bracelet with a concealed Crownclasp, the other on a matt brown alligator strap.
The third is cased in 950 platinum with an ice-blue dial, Rolex’s traditional signal for platinum, on a matt black alligator strap. All carry the Superlative Chronometer certification Rolex strengthened in 2026, and a roughly 66-hour power reserve.
