Rolex Perpetual Padellone, the first full calendar since 1953
Rolex released the Perpetual Padellone on 15 September 2026, an annual calendar with moonphase in 18k Everose gold or 950 platinum, starting at CHF 52,500. It is the first Rolex to display day, date, month and moon on one dial since the reference 8171 left production in 1953.
The timing is the first clue that Rolex takes this seriously. The brand almost never launches outside Watches and Wonders. The handful of exceptions in recent memory are the Deepsea Challenge, the D-Blue Deepsea and the Daytona Le Mans, all watches Rolex wanted standing alone in the news cycle.
Three versions arrive, all permanent collection rather than limited. Everose gold on a matt brown alligator strap, Everose gold on the Settimo bracelet, and 950 platinum with an ice blue dial on black alligator.
The name is the other headline. Italian collectors spent seventy years calling the 8171 the Padellone, meaning large frying pan, because a 38mm watch in 1949 was absurd. Rolex trademarked that nickname in 2025 and has now built a watch around it. Collectors who spotted the trademark filing and the calendar patent last autumn called this release almost to the month.
The short version
Rolex brought back its most unusual vintage layout and put an entirely new movement underneath it.
- Annual calendar with day, month, pointer date and moonphase, in a 39mm Everose or platinum case, 12.20mm thick.
- New calibre 7190 with the Dynapulse escapement, 5Hz, 66-hour power reserve, minus 2 to plus 2 seconds per day.
- Swiss retail runs CHF 52,500 for Everose on leather, CHF 59,000 for platinum, CHF 64,800 for Everose on the Settimo bracelet.
- The platinum ice blue and the Settimo bracelet version are the two most likely to hold or beat retail.
- The catch: 50 metres of water resistance, a push-pull crown, an all-polished gold case that marks easily, and four recessed case-side correctors that need a pusher tool.
What is different about the Perpetual Padellone
The dial is a near copy of the 1949 original. Everything behind it is new.
Rolex kept the vintage layout exactly where collectors wanted it and changed the one thing that made the original annoying to own.
Quick specs
An annual calendar, not a triple calendar
This is the change that actually matters to an owner. The vintage 8171 carried a triple calendar, which is a fancy way of saying it had no idea how long a month was. You corrected it five times a year, every time a 30-day month ended.
The Perpetual Padellone knows the difference between a 30-day and a 31-day month and rolls over on its own. You touch it once a year, at the end of February. Rolex has done annual calendars before in the Sky-Dweller, so the function is not new to the brand, but the mechanism here is.
The case and the correctors
The case borrows its architecture from the Perpetual 1908, which means a domed and finely fluted bezel, a domed sapphire crystal, a push-pull crown and gently chamfered lug tops. At 39mm by 12.20mm it is a touch thicker than a standard 1908, which is the tax you pay for the calendar works.
Everose gold is new to the Perpetual collection, which is worth flagging. Rolex has kept the 1908 in yellow gold, white gold and platinum until now, so the Everose case here is the first of its kind in the line.
Four recessed correctors sit in the case flanks. Month at 2 o'clock, date at 4, moonphase at 8, day at 10. This is the first thing we would push back on. A crown-operated system would have been cleaner, and anyone who has scratched a polished gold case flank with a pusher tool at 11pm knows why.
The dial and the moon
Intense white on the Everose models, ice blue on the platinum, both with a new matte grained finish across the centre and a raised satin-finished track carrying the date numerals around the edge. Applied numerals sit at 3 and 9, faceted markers fill the rest, all in rose or white gold to match the case.
A blue PVD-coated centre hand with a crescent moon at its tip points to the date. Day and month sit in twin apertures at 12 o'clock, in English. Central seconds is the one clear departure from the vintage watch, which used small seconds sharing the moonphase subdial.
The moon display at 6 o'clock is the piece Rolex clearly spent money on. A blue enamelled disc carries a full moon and a new moon both cut from meteorite, the full moon in silver with a pad-printed face, the new moon coated in dark blue PVD. The stars around them are pad-printed silver. The disc turns once every 29.53 days.
Straps and the Settimo bracelet
Both metals come on matt alligator with green calfskin lining and a Dualclasp double folding clasp, brown for Everose and black for platinum. The Everose model alone can be ordered on the Settimo bracelet, the seven-link polished design Rolex introduced in yellow gold in 2025, with a patented curved end link and a concealed Crownclasp.
If you want our read on which one to order, it is the bracelet. Gold bracelets on Rolex dress watches are consistently the harder allocation to get and the easier watch to sell later.
Inside the calibre 7190 and the Haplos annual calendar
Rolex put its newest escapement into its most classical watch.
The calibre 7190 shares its base with the 7135 from the Land-Dweller, which means the Dynapulse escapement and a 5Hz balance, wrapped around an annual calendar module Rolex calls Haplos.
Dynapulse is a double-wheel, indirect-tangential impulse escapement made almost entirely from silicon. Rolex claims it runs roughly 30 per cent more efficiently than a conventional Swiss lever. The practical result is that the movement beats at 36,000 vibrations per hour instead of the usual 28,800 without burning extra energy or stealing extra height.
That efficiency is why the power reserve stays at 66 hours. A 5Hz movement carrying a day, date, month and moonphase, all jumping instantaneously at midnight, has no business running for nearly three days. It does because the escapement is doing less work per oscillation.
The rest of the regulating organ follows the Land-Dweller. Syloxi silicon hairspring, ceramic balance staff, variable inertia balance wheel, traversing balance bridge and optimised Paraflex shock absorbers.
Haplos, and why it is genuinely clever
Rolex has a patent application pending on the annual calendar system. The elegance is in how little it adds. Two components couple to the existing date mechanism, an extra carrier finger and an annual lever, and the programming that tells the watch how long the month is lives on the reverse face of the month disc itself.
Most annual calendars bolt a programme wheel and a stack of levers onto the going train. This one uses a part the watch already had. Fewer components in a calendar mechanism means fewer things a watchmaker has to diagnose in fifteen years, which is the part buyers should care about.
Through the sapphire caseback you get Rolex Côtes de Genève on the bridges, chatons around several jewels and a solid yellow gold oscillating weight. It is the same view as the Land-Dweller's 7135, which is a compliment. Superlative Chronometer certification applies, now with the strengthened 2026 criteria covering magnetism, reliability and sustainability alongside the minus 2 to plus 2 seconds per day standard.
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Why the Padellone name carries weight
The vintage reference behind the new release, and what it trades for.
Rolex made exactly two watches with a triple calendar and moonphase, the 8171 and the Oyster 6062, and both died by 1953. Everything else in seventy-plus years of catalogue has been a time-and-date watch with variations.
The 8171 launched in 1949 at 38mm, which was enormous for the period and earned the frying pan nickname. It was never an Oyster. The caseback snapped on rather than screwing down, so it was never waterproof, and it ran the automatic calibre A295. Scholarship puts total production somewhere around 1,000 to 1,200 pieces in steel and yellow gold, with steel slightly ahead.
The vintage market treats it accordingly. A steel example sold at Christie's Geneva in November 2024 for CHF 88,200, roughly $104,000. Dealer asks on good yellow gold and steel pieces sit anywhere from $110,000 to $356,000 depending on dial and case condition. An exceptional two-tone dial steel example went through Phillips Geneva in 2019 at CHF 980,000. Figures verified September 2026.
Case wear is the whole game on these. Most surviving 8171s have been polished hard enough to erase the caseback engraving, and replacement casebacks are common. If one crosses our counter, the engraving and the lug geometry are the first two things we look at, before the dial.
Risk flag
The new Perpetual Padellone will not make vintage 8171s cheaper, and it is unlikely to make them dramatically more expensive either. Renewed attention on a reference with roughly a thousand surviving examples mostly produces more aggressive asks and more redialled watches on the market. Buy the condition, not the headline.
Rolex Perpetual Padellone price
What Rolex is charging, and what that converts to.
Swiss retail runs from CHF 52,500 to CHF 64,800 depending on metal and bracelet. All three versions are permanent collection, not limited editions.
Rolex Perpetual Padellone retail, published 15 September 2026
Swiss prices include VAT. US list prices had not been posted at the time of writing, verified September 2026.
Rolex has priced the Swiss and US markets close together on the 1908, where the yellow gold Settimo model listed at CHF 33,400 and lands around $35,000 in the United States. Apply that relationship and the Everose Padellone on leather should come in near $55,000, the platinum near $62,000 and the Settimo version near $68,000. Treat those as estimates until Rolex publishes the real figures.
For context on where that sits, a Patek Philippe 5396R annual calendar with moonphase lists around $67,500 and an Audemars Piguet or Vacheron Constantin equivalent runs higher. Rolex has undercut the traditional complication houses rather than matched them, which is a deliberate choice.
What the Rolex Perpetual Padellone will be worth
Our read on secondary market value, based on how the closest comparables actually trade.
Expect the platinum ice blue to trade above retail, the Settimo bracelet version to hold retail, and the Everose on leather to settle at or slightly under list within eighteen months. Gold dress watches on straps are the weakest resale configuration in the Rolex catalogue and this one will not break that pattern.
There is no secondary market yet, so the honest way to forecast is to look at what the nearest relatives do. Three of them are useful.
| Model | Retail | Market price | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cellini Moonphase 50535, discontinued 2023 | $26,700 | About $24,500 | Roughly 8 per cent under |
| Perpetual 1908 platinum 52506 | $33,600 | About $39,200 | Roughly 17 per cent over |
| Perpetual 1908 yellow gold 52508 | $28,850 | About $29,900 | Roughly at retail |
| Perpetual 1908 white gold 52509 | $30,300 | About $22,600 | Roughly 25 per cent under |
| Land-Dweller steel 127334, 2025 launch | $16,450 | Low $40,000s in first six months | Well over, and easing |
Market figures from WatchCharts and dealer inventory, September 2026. Retail figures are US list.
The platinum is the one to own
Platinum ice blue is the most reliable value play Rolex has. The 1908 platinum sits about 17 per cent over list two years into its run, and our own platinum ice blue 1908s move at $43,000 to $50,000 against a $33,600 sticker. Apply the same behaviour to a CHF 59,000 Padellone and you are looking at a watch that holds its number.
Platinum also does something gold cannot do here. It is heavy, it is scarce in the catalogue, and Rolex produces it in genuinely small quantities. That combination is what has kept every platinum Rolex dress reference from becoming a discount watch.
Expect an early premium, and expect it to fade
The Land-Dweller is the cautionary tale worth reading. Dynapulse, thirty-two patent applications and a brand new collection drove a steel watch from $16,450 retail to the low $40,000s inside six months. Prices have been drifting down ever since as supply caught up. The premium was real and the premium was temporary.
The Padellone will follow a milder version of the same curve. Grey market asks in the first six months will run well over list, driven by allocation scarcity rather than durable demand. An ask is not a trade. When someone tells you a watch is worth a number, ask them whether they would write that cheque today.
What a dealer offer looks like
Here is the part most watch blogs will not put in writing. Retail market price and what a dealer pays are two different numbers. A wholesale offer on an unworn precious metal dress watch typically sits ten to fifteen per cent under the retail market figure, because whoever buys it has to carry it while it sits.
So on an Everose Padellone that lists near $55,000 and settles around $52,000 on the secondary market, a realistic same-day buy offer lands in the mid to high $40,000s. If you are buying at retail and plan to sell in two years, that is the number to plan against, not the sticker. Anyone quoting you list price as resale value is selling you something.
The exception is the platinum. If it behaves like the platinum 1908, a complete unworn example will support an offer at or above what you paid, which makes it the only version of this watch we would describe as low risk.
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Who should buy it, and who should look elsewhere
Our position, and the buyers who should ignore it.
Buy the platinum 53506-0002 if you want one watch from this release and you care what it is worth later. Buy the Everose on the Settimo bracelet if you want the version people will actually want to look at on your wrist.
This is the most interesting thing Rolex has done to a dress watch in decades. A genuinely new escapement, a calendar mechanism built from two extra parts, and a dial layout with real history behind it. If you have been waiting for Rolex to make something that competes with Patek and Lange on complication rather than on brand, this is it.
Look elsewhere if any of this describes you
- You want to shower, swim or sweat in it. Fifty metres and a push-pull crown means a dress watch, and the case is not an Oyster.
- You hate correctors. Four recessed pushers in a polished gold case flank need a tool, and that tool will scratch something eventually.
- You wanted a perpetual calendar. This is an annual, and it still needs a correction every February.
- You are rough on watches. An all-polished Everose case at 39mm by 12.20mm picks up hairlines from a desk edge, and refinishing a case with those chamfers is not cheap.
- You are buying to flip on a sports model timeline. Precious metal dress watches do not behave like a steel Daytona, and the Everose on leather is the configuration most likely to cost you money.
- You want classical finishing above all. The calibre 7190 is beautifully engineered and industrially finished. Hand-anglage this is not.
If you are comparing this against the alternatives, look at the Perpetual 1908 if the complication is not the point, and look at a vintage 8171 if the history is the point. We stock both sides of that decision.
Rolex Perpetual Padellone FAQ
What is the Rolex Perpetual Padellone?
The Rolex Perpetual Padellone is a 39mm annual calendar watch with a moonphase display, released on 15 September 2026 in 18k Everose gold and 950 platinum. It shows the day and month in twin apertures at 12 o'clock, the date via a central pointer hand around the dial edge, and the moonphase at 6 o'clock. The layout revives the Rolex reference 8171 from 1949, which Italian collectors nicknamed the Padellone.
How much does the Rolex Perpetual Padellone cost?
Swiss retail is CHF 52,500 for the Everose gold model on a leather strap, CHF 59,000 for the platinum model with an ice blue dial, and CHF 64,800 for the Everose gold model on the Settimo bracelet. All prices include VAT. United States list prices had not been published as of September 2026, but based on how Rolex prices the Perpetual 1908 across markets, the Everose version should land near $55,000.
What are the reference numbers for the Rolex Perpetual Padellone?
There are three. Reference 53505-0002 is Everose gold on a matt brown alligator strap. Reference 53505-0003 is Everose gold on the Settimo gold bracelet. Reference 53506-0002 is 950 platinum with an ice blue dial on a matt black alligator strap. All three are part of the permanent Rolex collection rather than limited editions.
Is the Perpetual Padellone a perpetual calendar?
No. It is an annual calendar, which automatically distinguishes between 30-day and 31-day months but does not account for February. The owner needs to correct the date once a year, at the end of February. The word Perpetual in the name refers to Rolex's automatic winding system, which the brand has used since 1931, and not to a perpetual calendar complication.
What movement is in the Rolex Perpetual Padellone?
The calibre 7190, an in-house automatic movement with 35 jewels, a 66-hour power reserve and a frequency of 36,000 vibrations per hour. It uses the Dynapulse escapement that Rolex introduced in the Land-Dweller, made almost entirely from silicon and roughly 30 per cent more efficient than a conventional Swiss lever escapement. The annual calendar system is called Haplos and has a patent application pending.
Is the Rolex Perpetual Padellone waterproof?
It is water resistant to 50 metres, which covers splashes and handwashing but not swimming or showering. The case uses a push-pull crown rather than a screw-down crown, and it is not built on the Oyster case architecture that Rolex uses for its sports models. Treat it as a dress watch.
Will the Rolex Perpetual Padellone sell above retail?
Probably in the first six months, on allocation scarcity rather than durable demand. Longer term, the platinum ice blue version is the most likely to hold a premium, because the platinum Perpetual 1908 currently trades around 17 per cent over its $33,600 list price. The Everose gold version on a leather strap is the most likely to settle at or slightly below retail, which is how gold dress watches on straps typically behave.
What is the difference between the new Padellone and the vintage Rolex 8171?
The vintage reference 8171, made from 1949 to 1953, was a 38mm triple calendar that needed manual correction five times a year, used a snap-on caseback and was not waterproof. The 2026 Perpetual Padellone is 39mm, uses an annual calendar that needs correcting once a year, has a screwed sapphire caseback, 50 metres of water resistance and a modern high-frequency movement. The vintage watch also had small seconds, while the new one has a central seconds hand.
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