The Vacheron Constantin Concours d’Élégance Horlogère, announced in partnership with Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo, turns its gaze outward, toward the collectors and enthusiasts who have carried its timepieces across generations, and asks them to bring those pieces into the light.
The competition, the first of its kind dedicated exclusively to timepieces, is open to owners of Vacheron Constantin pocket watches and wristwatches produced between 1755 and 1999. Seven categories are in contention: chiming mechanisms, chronographs, astronomical complications, multiple complications, the Chronomètre Royal designation, métiers d’art, and design. Each entry will be evaluated against nine criteria, among them authenticity, rarity, provenance, technicality, and what the organisers describe, with some poetry, as emotional dimension.
The initiative originated with Aurel Bacs, Senior Consultant at Phillips, a figure whose authority in the vintage watch market requires little elaboration. “As a lifelong enthusiast of Concours d’Élégance concept, it has long been my dream to bring this concept to fine watchmaking. I am delighted that Vacheron Constantin has accepted our invitation to support the world’s very first Concours d’Élégance dedicated to timepieces and I look forward to the inspiring discoveries and scholarly conversations that will emerge from the timepieces entered in this competition,” he says.
For Vacheron Constantin, the timing is deliberate. The Maison recently marked its 270th anniversary, and the competition extends that momentum into the collector community, a community the Maison has long cultivated but rarely placed so formally at the centre of its own narrative. Christian Selmoni, Director of Style and Heritage at Vacheron Constantin, who will co-chair the jury alongside Bacs, framed it with appropriate gravity: “Following our 270th anniversary celebrations, this competition allows us to further honor those who preserve and promote the Maison’s expertise and history. It also creates new opportunities for exchange, particularly with members of exclusive communities such as The Hour Club.”
The jury will draw from a cross-disciplinary field: watchmakers, designers, historians, journalists, collectors, and industry advisors — a composition that reflects the competition’s ambition to assess these pieces not merely as objects of mechanical achievement, but as cultural artefacts. Quartz watches, clocks, and significantly modified pieces are excluded, keeping the focus on mechanical horological heritage in its most considered forms.
Registration is open through April 30th, 2026, at Vacheron Constantin boutiques worldwide and online at vacheron-constantin.com. Seven trophies will be awarded in Geneva on November 10th, 2026, following the Phillips autumn auctions. The absence of a monetary prize is, in its own way, a statement: what is being recognised here is not market value, but something harder to quantify.
