IAMWATCH 2026: What to See at Singapore’s Gathering of Independent Watchmakers

For four days this week, a hotel in Singapore becomes the place where independent watchmaking’s makers and collectors share the same room. IAMWATCH 2026 runs from November 12–15 at The Singapore EDITION, bringing together more than 40 makers and friends of The Hour Glass, the Singapore-based retailer behind the gathering, for its second edition. The organizer’s tagline sums up the idea: before the brand, before the watch, the people.

The first IAMWATCH, in 2024, was built around the independent artisanal watchmaker and conceived principally for a Pan-Asian audience, though it drew collectors from around the world, many meeting the makers of their watches for the first time. This year’s theme widens the lens. Under the banner “independence relies on interdependence,” the program looks past the lone figure at the bench to the suppliers, specialist craftspeople, retailers, writers, collectors, and institutions that allow independent watchmaking to endure.

The program runs across three public days and includes six Conversations, six Lectures, thematic get-togethers, film screenings, and watchmaking masterclasses. Friday opens with “I Want to Make My Own Watch. Now What?”, in which Alex Rosenfield, Mehmet Korutürk, Pierre Biver, and William Massena join moderator Manuel Emch to talk capital, suppliers, pricing, and first clients. “The Morteau Generation,” moderated by Mark Kauzlarich, brings together Rémy Cools, Thomas Aubert, and Victor Monnin to discuss their shared education in Morteau and the relationships that followed.

Saturday turns to invention, as Andreas Strehler, Kari Voutilainen, Rexhep Rexhepi, and Roger W. Smith join Wei Koh for “Who Actually Invents Anything Anymore?” On the last day, Gautier Massonneau, Benoît Mintiens, and Sylvain Pinaud consider what watches made in 2026 and beyond should look like, with Constant Kwong moderating, while Karl-Fritz Scheufele, Matthieu Haverlan, and Fei Hou sit down with Aymeric Lacroix to ask whether independents need the big groups.

The lectures go deep on history: Carlos Torres on the observatory chronometry competitions and the régleurs behind them, Strehler on how innovation builds on tradition, Cools on 18th- and 19th-century French precision horology, and Smith on the co-axial escapement and the life and times of George Daniels.

That last name is the centerpiece. Phillips, in association with Bacs & Russo and The Hour Glass, presents George Daniels 100: The Genesis of Artisanal Watchmaking, which brings 22 of Daniels’ watches together to mark the centenary of his birth. Among them, Space Traveller I and Space Traveller II are exhibited together for the first time. Daniels made 24 pocket watches and two wristwatches in his lifetime, mastering 32 of the 34 disciplines required to make a watch by hand, and Space Traveller II, with its chronograph measuring both mean solar and sidereal time, stayed with him as his personal watch for nearly 30 years.

Saturday afternoon, November 14, is given over to Daniels. A documentary commissioned by Phillips in association with Bacs & Russo, filmed across the Isle of Man, England, and Switzerland with archival material from The George Daniels Educational Trust, has its avant-première, followed by a conversation between Aurel Bacs and Roger W. Smith, moderated by Su Jia Xian. That evening, “The Watchmaker’s Apprentice” traces Smith’s path from aspiring apprentice to Daniels’ collaborator.

Not everything happens on stage. Across all three public days, Swiss Federal Master Watchmaker Michael Dubs leads 90-minute masterclasses in movement decoration and the partial disassembly and reassembly of a mechanical movement; participants leave with the movement they worked on.

The informal get-togethers have no agenda at all. Friday’s “The OGs” gathers established makers including Felix Baumgartner, Martin Frei, Maximilian Büsser, Vianney Halter, Kari Voutilainen, and Roger W. Smith, while Saturday’s “The Young Guns” brings together a younger generation that includes Alexandre Hazemann, Alexis Ramel-Sartori, Anton Suhanov, Gaël Petermann, and Yosuke Sekiguchi. Two episodes of Wei Koh’s Man of the Hour series screen as well: one on Geneva’s La Fabrique du Temps on Friday, and one on Büsser and MB&F on Sunday, followed by a conversation between the two.

IAMWATCH 2026 opens with an invitation-only private view from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and a vernissage from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday, November 12. Public days run Friday through Sunday, November 13–15, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission is complimentary, but registration is required through iamwatch.com. Each evening, the Sunset Social takes over the hotel’s Outdoor Deck with food and drinks. The dress code is “double-wristed; resort casual,” which the organizers put more simply: wear the watches you want to talk about.

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Adrienne Faurote

Editor in Chief · Haute Time

As a former New Yorker, now a “Miamian,” Adrienne Faurote joined Haute Living in August of 2021. She currently serves as the Haute Media Group Editor-in-Chief, overseeing all editorial platforms within the Haute Media Group while also maintaining her role as Fashion, Jewelry & Watch Director. Prior to her position at Haute Living, Faurote was the Market Editor at Marie Claire Magazine US, amassing over ten years in the industry, becoming an authoritative voice in all things fashion, jewelry, and watches.