From Monday, October 19, 2026, through Wednesday, October 21, 2026, TAG Heuer hosted a group of 35 collectors at company headquarters at La Chaux-de-Fonds, for its 2026 Collectors Summit. After hosting gatherings of its collectors in 2013 and 2016, TAG Heuer had hosted its most recent Collectors’ Summits in November 2024 and October 2025.
I attended the 2016 and 2024 Summits and share the following impressions of the 2026 event.
1. TAG Heuer has a New CEO (and the Collectors Love the Tone at the Top)
Beatrice Goasglas has been the CEO of TAG Heuer since May 1, 2026, so this was her first opportunity to host a Collectors Summit. While her primary responsibility is to oversee TAG Heuer’s sale of several hundred million CHF of new watches each year, Beatrice showed tremendous enthusiasm for the vintage Heuer chronographs that were the focus of the Summit. Beatrice seems to have a deep appreciation of the Heuer heritage and a vision as to how this history should inspire and be reflected in TAG Heuer’s new watches.
Over the years, I’ve been to a lot of events at which TAG Heuer CEOs have hosted vintage collectors, but the enthusiasm that Beatrice shows for the brand’s heritage and her engagement with collectors is on another level. She seemed to enjoy chatting with the collectors as much as they enjoyed chatting with her, and she wasn’t hesitant to study and try on their watches.
CEOs have their own styles and strengths, but if we were to create a graph capturing, (x) on one axis, the number of conversations between the CEO and collectors, the number of watches that the CEO tried on or admired, and the number of selfies tolerated by the CEO, and (y) on the other axis, their apparent enjoyment of such activities, Beatrice would have been “up and to the right”. Of course, energizing 35 collectors for three days is relatively easy; more importantly Beatrice seems to have energized TAG Heuer’s global ecosystem, from top officers at company headquarters to the sales associates at local boutiques, and everyone in between.
At the Summit, Beatrice took delivery of a vintage (or perhaps “neo-vintage”) watch for her husband. It’s hard to imagine any other model could have generated more enthusiasm from the collectors than the model she chose – the S/el Analog-Digital Chronograph (reference S25.706C), as worn by one of TAG Heuer’s most revered heroes, three-time Formula 1 world champion, Ayrton Senna.
2. And TAG Heuer is Making Some Great Watches
We collect the vintage Heuer chronographs, but we really want to love the modern watches being made by TAG Heuer. We really do. The dream is that we might actually like a TAG Heuer chronograph so much that we would choose to add it to our collection.
Still, over the last two and one half decades of the current century, there have been stretches when the news that TAG Heuer was introducing a new model was enough to send the vintage collectors running for cover. How bad would the new watch be? Would we try to defend the watch or would we just hope that our friends in other vintage communities wouldn’t notice it?
While we can expect that there will be some time lag between TAG Heuer introducing new models and the vintage collectors adding them to their collections, I’m here to tell you that things are moving in the right direction, with the collectors showing a genuine appreciation for the new models and technologies.
Julien Delcambre, TAG Heuer’s Design Lead, describes the design codes of the vintage Monaco or Carrera and illustrates how these codes are incorporated into the modern TAG Heuer counterparts, and we see the vintage guys snapping photos and jotting down reference numbers. So too, when Carole Forestier-Kasapi explained how — in building the new TH80-00 movement for the Monaco Evergraph Chronograph — TAG Heuer has redesigned the chronograph’s start / stop / reset mechanism, replacing its system of levers, pivots and springs with a “bistable compliant mechanism”, the vintage collectors took notice and were impressed with the performance of the newest Monaco.
While it may take some time for the vintage guys to add these models to their collections, the enthusiasm that the vintage collectors showed for the new models that TAG Heuer is building was a major step in the right direction. No doubt, resisting the urge to run for cover when we hear that TAG Heuer is introducing a new model is an important first step in fully embracing the brand’s modern watches.
3. TAG Heuer Has Perfected the Summit
Nick Biebuyck became TAG Heuer’s Heritage Director in March 2021 and this is the third Summit that Nick, together with his team of Heritage Manager Celine Caron and top vintage watchmaker Denis Chardon. The consensus among the 2026 participants is that TAG Heuer has just about perfected the Summit.
Meetings with senior officers at TAG Heuer were genuinely interesting. Carole Forestier- Kasapi and her movement team covered recent technical / movement innovations and Julien Delcambre and his product team described the novelties recently introduced by TAG Heuer, as well as some novelties in the pipeline for early 2027. Summit participants also had very informative visits with the department where TAG Heuer assembles and tests its watches, as well as TAG Heuer’s ArteCad dial-making facility, located in Tramelan. The ArteCad visit was especially interesting as we saw how TAG Heuer produces complex dials, for itself and several other Swiss brands, and handles the restoration of vintage watches.
Beyond the meetings with TAG Heuer leaders and factory visits, the Summit program provided ample time for the collectors to catch up with each other and share their watches. From early morning until (very) late at night, collectors held court in the hotel lobby, swapping stories and studying each other’s watches. Indeed, had there been no “program” at all for the Summit, these 35 collectors would have been thrilled to have shared three days (and a few beers) in the lobby.
4. The Archives Have Gone from Worst to First
TAG Heuer opened its Museum in January 2008; it’s nice, but for the vintage collectors, the adjacent Archives have always been the ultimate destination of the vintage Heuer world. The Museum is beautiful, with hundreds of interesting watches on display. But for the vintage enthusiasts, the problem comes with the word, “display”. In an era when most of the watches that we see are on our phones or computer monitors, we have had enough of the “displays.”
We don’t want to be limited to looking at watches through glass. The ultimate experience for collectors is walking into a room with a couple of thousand high-quality watches; sliding open a favorite drawer; picking out a couple of interesting watches; winding them up; and putting them through their paces, stop, start and reset. We want to see the blue paint with our own eyes – Skipperrera, Monaco, Silverstone and Daytona; we want to compare the cases, dials and hands, side-by-side – first execution, transitional and second execution. We want to see and hold the models that never made it into the catalogs.
I recall the first time I visited what were then called the “archives”, better described as a large storage room adjacent to the Museum. Open metal shelves were piled high with boxes and papers, most of them having no labels. I had to bring my own lights to take photos and was left to work on what we call a “card table”. Opening the drawers was a treasure hunt, as there was little correlation between the labels on the drawers and the watches that they contained.
Over the last couple of years, Heritage Director Nick Biebuyck, his assistant Celine Caron and their colleagues have turned this dusty storage room into the ultimate dreamland for collectors. We slide open the drawers and the brand’s history comes to life. Whether we are looking at the “Big Three” – Autavia, Carrera and Monaco – or the brand’s more limited collections (such as the Jarama and Monza), they are all in those drawers.
Even if there were no watches in the room, the Archives is a fantastic destination for collectors – catalogs dating back to around 1915; original Kodachrome slides from the “Golden Age” of motorsports; binders bulging with photographs; and then there is the “holy of holies” – a tall safe full of boxes of dials, many of them new old stock. Dial enthusiasts can also study oversized boards with samples of hundreds of dials used by Heuer over the years.
For a brand that consistently draws on its heritage portfolio in designing today’s watches, the Archives is a source of fantastic source of inspiration. Inspiring those who collect the vintage watches is nice; inspiring those who are designing and marketing today’s TAG Heuer chronographs is an even higher purpose.
5. The Community of Vintage Heuer Collectors is Stronger Than Ever
Spending three days with 35 collectors at the Summit reminded me how strong this community has become. Glance at the list of Instagram account names, and we see our community’s dedication to the Heuer brand – Heuer_Autavia, HeuerCamaro, Heuer_Carrera, Heuer4Me, Heuer.Haus, Heuerista, HeuerChrono and Go_Chrono_Go, and let’s not forget Chronomatik (with a “K”) and Chronomatic (with a “C”). Yes, our community seems to have experts in all the collections and complications, from the first models in the 1930s through the latest models from TAG Heuer.
Our collectors provide a broad range of skills to the community. Abel is a fourth-generation watchmaker; Owen (age 17) is a fourth-year watchmaker; Michael creates beautiful leather straps and cases; Bjoern is our expert in typography and dial design; and Jerome is the founder and CEO of Eagle Eye, a company that started making loupes for watch collectors and now produces a full range of related accessories.
The collectors who attended the Summit also excelled in another realm – making noise and creating excitement about the Summit on Instagram and other social media. We have photographers and videographers, masters of the feed, the stories and the reel. During the three days of the Summit, and for several days afterwards, #HeuerCollectorSummit was definitely trending on Instagram, with some fantastic content. When we got back to the hotel after the Monday and Tuesday night dinners, there was the choice – hang out with the collectors in the lobby or go up to your room and post images and information from the day. Somehow, the collectors attending the Summit were able to devote their full energy to both these pursuits.
But our community of collectors is more than a group of experts and service providers, more than a “manufacture.” Perhaps the work “atelier” captures it well. We are a community of friends and craftsmen. Together, we have watched our children be born and grow up, and suffered some losses along the way (RIP, Laurent and Hans). We share values and genuinely respect each other’s contributions, with an enthusiasm for collaboration. Listen to the conversations in the hotel lobby – first we ask about our families and then about our watches!
6. Charlie Dunne is a Unique Force of Nature (and Eric Wind Should be Worried)
Charlie Dunne is the Vice President, Senior Watch Specialist at Wind Vintage, a dealer in Palm Beach, Florida, and leads the content creation for the company. Charlie attended the Summit, wearing the circa 2025 TAG Heuer Carrera that he had given his father, and did a fantastic job taking photographs of the collectors and their watches.
Below is a gallery showing just a few of the amazing photos that Charlie took at the Summit, showing some of the watches that collectors brought. For lots more photos, see Charlie’s fantastic posting, Watch Spotting at The 2026 TAG Heuer Collector Summit.
At the Summit, one of my collector friends asked me why we are seeing so few vintage Heuer chronographs being sold by the major auction houses. I pointed across the room at Charlie, and told my friend that Charlie and his partner Eric Wind are dominating the market for vintage Heuer chronographs. They have deep information about the watches (so no fakes and shenanigans), they are getting top prices for sellers and there are no fees for buyers (compared to 25% for the auction houses), so there’s not much left for the auction houses to pursue. I told him that over the past six months I could recall Wind Vintage listing or selling three Chronomatics, a Dark Lord Monaco, two Indianapolis Motor Speedway Carreras, and half a dozen Seafarers, with a steady flow of the more common models — Autavias, Carreras, Monacos and Camaros. Having Charlie and Eric make the market for the vintage Heuers, rather than the auctions houses, has been a good thing for the collectors community.
Wednesday afternoon, after the Summit had ended, a few of us went to the Patek Philippe Museum, in Geneva, with Charlie. As we were looking at maps and considering whether we might want to get the audio guide, Charlie said, “I can show you around”. I am a novice when it comes to Patek Philippe, and Charlie provided a tour that conveyed the history of the company and details about dozens of the watches. And, yes, he shared information about some of the watches that seemed to be new to members of the Museum staff.
OK, folks. Here’s a hot take for you re Charlie. It’s not going to be “Eric and Charlie” or “Wind Vintage” forever. Expect to see the name change to “Dunne and Wind Vintage Watches” sometime soon.
7. You Know You’re in Switzerland When . . .
Thursday morning, the day after the Summit, I went for a run along Lake Geneva, and visited the train station after the run for the usual post-run hydration and refreshments. At the station, I bought a ticket for the train to the airport, which I would use in about an hour. When I got back to the hotel, I couldn’t find the ticket, so imagined that I had dropped it somewhere on the walk back from the station to the hotel.
No problem in Geneva. An hour later, when I walked back to the train station to get the train to the airport, there was my ticket, right on the sidewalk. Yes, this is a clean, orderly city; I wondered whether a roll of my watches could have also remained in position on the sidewalk.
Thanks
Huge thanks to the entire team at TAG Heuer that hosted the 2026 Collectors Summit. I’ve mentioned six individuals in this posting — Beatrice, Carole, Celine, Denis, Nick, and Julien — and I’ll just leave it at that, but there were so many other folks at TAG Heuer who made these days so special. You know who you are and we thank you for everything that you did to make the Summit such an amazing event.
Thanks also to all the collectors who participated in the Summit. The dictionary tells us that “camaraderie” is a feeling of warmth, trust, friendship, and good-fellowship that grows among people who spend time together, work toward a common goal, or share an experience. Yes, the camaraderie was what made these days so special, and it’s what will keep us going . . . building, creating, chatting, sharing, collaborating and making wonderful noise until the next Summit.
Peace out, La Chaux-de-Fonds! Looking forward to seeing you again sometime soon . . .
Jeff Stein
November 4, 2026
