Cartier Watchmaking Prize 28th Edition: What the Winning Entries Reveal About the Next Generation of Movement Constructors

Constraints as a Design Brief: The Engineering Logic Behind the Cartier Prize Format

On 24 June 2026, Cartier announced the winners of the 28th edition of its Prize for Watchmaking Talents of Tomorrow at the Maison des Métiers d’Art in La Chaux-de-Fonds — the first time the ceremony has been held at that venue. For component manufacturers and movement suppliers watching the competition, the format itself is the most instructive detail. Each finalist receives a single Cartier cal. That is not a generous allocation. It is closer to the reality of a small-series prototype run than to the open-ended timelines of a school project, and it forces candidates to make the same hard trade-offs between ambition and manufacturability that define professional movement construction.

The theme for the 28th edition — Shifting the Balance: Reading and Perceiving Time Differently — was framed around the motion of a pendulum and the idea of moving beyond conventional time display. Cartier positioned this explicitly against its own reference points: the mystery clocks, the Révélation d’une Panthère, the Santos Dumont Rewind, and the Tank à Guichets. For the candidates, that context set a high mechanical bar. Abstracted time display is not a stylistic choice you can fake; it requires a genuine rethinking of the gear train’s output stage, the display mechanism, and how the two are coupled without introducing unacceptable backlash or positional error.

The Winning Constructions: Mechanical Approaches Worth Examining

In the Apprentice Watchmakers category, first prize went to Aymeric Peters of IATA in Namur, Belgium, for Silence Choisi — translated as “Chosen Silence.” The piece incorporates a suspended time complication, a mechanism that blanks or freezes the time display on demand. Functionally, this requires a disengagement or locking mechanism inserted between the motion works and the display, and building that reliably within the cal. Peters is now on a fast track to employment within Cartier, which is the practical outcome the industry should register: the prize functions as a structured recruitment pipeline, not merely a ceremonial award.

Second prize in the same category was shared between two entries. Layla Sluysmans, also from IATA, submitted Nymphéa, a water lily form that mechanically opens and closes every two hours to reveal a dial at its centre. The cam or lever geometry required to drive that kind of periodic, symmetrical petal movement from a standard going-train output — without stalling or over-running — is precisely the sort of problem that separates a competent student from a capable constructor. Edouard Nicod of the Lycée Edgar Faure in Morteau shared second prize with La Dualité Des Opposés, which presents Cartier’s panther motif as a figure that slowly orbits the dial via an exposed wandering calibre. A wandering display driven from a modified alarm movement, finished to a presentable standard within the budget constraint, is not a trivial undertaking.

The Technicians category produced equally pointed results. Arthur Choquet of the Lycée Jean Jaurès in Rennes took first prize with Un Instant, a table clock evoking a Parisian street scene built around the city’s lamp post aesthetic. Adam Deroche of the Lycée Diderot placed second with Médusée — “transfixed” — in which the hands remain stationary while the dial rotates beneath them. Inverting the conventional relationship between dial and hands requires a fixed-hand arbor arrangement and a driven dial ring, which introduces its own set of concentricity and friction challenges. Third prize went to Adrien Stefenelli, also of Lycée Jean Jaurès, for Echo, a table clock without a dial that strikes en passant — a passing-strike mechanism that activates without a dedicated push-piece, triggered instead by the movement of the time train itself.

What the Competition Signals for the Supply Chain

The jury included Kari Voutilainen alongside Roy Davidoff, Pascale Lepeu, Nathalie Marielloni, and Pascal Ravessoud — a panel with direct production credibility, not just institutional representation. That composition matters because it means the evaluation criteria are grounded in what actually works mechanically, not only what photographs well.

Over the competition’s history, more than 2,000 candidates have passed through the process since Cartier introduced the prize in 1995. At the component manufacturing level, that represents a substantial cohort of young technicians who have been trained to work within defined movement platforms, tight material budgets, and compressed build schedules — conditions that map directly onto the realities of small-series and bespoke production. The call for entries for the 29th edition opens this autumn, and given that the 28th edition drew participants from France, Switzerland, and Belgium across both apprentice and technician tracks, the geographic spread of the talent pool is widening.

For brands sourcing movement constructors and finishing specialists, the Cartier Prize cohort is worth tracking systematically. The entries from this edition demonstrate that candidates are already working with non-standard display architectures, periodic mechanical actuation, and passing-strike complications — all areas where experienced hands are genuinely scarce.