Road to Naples: Panerai Unveils Two New Luminor Luna Rossa Watches for the 2027 America’s Cup

With the 38th America’s Cup less than a year away, and heading to Naples for the first time in the competition’s history, Panerai is marking the countdown with two new Luminor Luna Rossa watches. The pair extends the maison’s partnership with the Luna Rossa sailing team, an alliance established in 2019, and each timepiece is built around a specific function on the water: a chronograph tuned for speed, and a GMT made for tracking time across zones.

“This partnership is more than just a collaboration; it’s a shared journey started eight years ago into the future of high-performance watchmaking,” says Panerai CEO Emmanuel Perrin, who describes the relationship as “a real-world test laboratory for our timepieces.”

The headline piece is the limited-edition Luminor Luna Rossa Chrono PAM01768, a 44mm brushed steel chronograph capped by a polished bezel and driven by Panerai’s automatic P.9210 caliber, good for a 42-hour reserve. Its purpose is written on the dial. A speed tachymeter on the flange lets a sailor clock average boat speed over a fixed 1,000-meter distance, read off in kilometers or miles per hour by the central red-and-white chronograph seconds hand. The red-accented pushers sit on the left of the case, at 8 and 10 o’clock, preserving the Luminor’s signature crown-protecting bridge on the right.

The silver sun-brushed dial, lit with white Super-LumiNova X2, carries the collection’s now-familiar details: a grey small-seconds hand and minute counter at 3 o’clock, and sub-dials finished in “azurage,” a concentric-circle engraving meant to evoke moving waves. Limited to 500 numbered pieces and water-resistant to 100 meters, it also introduces a first for the Luna Rossa line, a Velcro strap in rubber and grey textile with a red Luna Rossa stripe, quick to adjust and made for contact with water. A second black rubber strap comes tucked in the deluxe blue cherry-wood box.

Its companion, the Luminor Luna Rossa GMT PAM01791, takes a more wearable form. At 40mm it is the more compact of the two, and it debuts the first metal bracelet in the Luna Rossa collection, fitted with Panerai’s tool-free PAM Click release system for quick changes. Inside is the automatic P.900/GMT movement, a slim caliber that delivers a three-day power reserve and a 12-hour “GMT Business” display, a nod to Panerai GMTs of the early 2000s, for reading a second time zone across race schedules and international team coordination alike.

The design speaks the same language as the chronograph: a silver sun-brushed dial with white Super-LumiNova X2, a red small-seconds accent, and an “azurage” top plate. The detail collectors will notice is the GMT hand, shaped after the sail of the Luna Rossa boat and pointing, fittingly, in the direction of travel. It, too, is water-resistant to 100 meters, and arrives in Panerai’s recycled-paper box with a travel pouch.

Both watches sit squarely within Panerai’s founding logic, a house that built its name on instruments made for the sea, from its 1930s work for the Royal Italian Navy to the crown-protecting Luminor that reached the public in 1993. Seen that way, the Luna Rossa partnership reads less as a marketing exercise than as a continuation: a real boat, a real race, and two watches designed to be used on the way to Naples in 2027.