Roger Dubuis’ latest releases at Watches and Wonders are steeped in the brand’s history. For the occasion, the maison introduces two complicated pieces – a perpetual calendar and day-date calendar – each in the brand’s patented biretrograde display.
Prior to founding his namesake maison, Mr. Roger Dubuis was a prolific watchmaker for several brands, from Patek Philippe to Longines. One such project came in 1989 when he and fellow watchmaker Jean-Marc Wiederrecht collaboratively pioneered and patented their famous biretrograde display, which reworked the traditional concept and made it more streamlined. This approach eased assembly and improved the stability and readability of the hands on the ecliptic retrograde counters. Soon after, the pair engineered a double retrograde perpetual calendar module, which was notably used in a timepiece for Harry Winston. A year after the brand’s official founding, Roger Dubuis introduced its own biretrograde display timepiece and later the perpetual calendar complication in its iconic Sympathie and Homage collections.
Today, we see the next evolution of these concepts highlighted in a rather modestly sized 40mm version of its Excalibur line. The Excalibur Biretrograde Perpetual Calendar is notably powered by an entirely new movement: the RD850. Here, the maison builds upon the work set forth four decades ago with a self-winding caliber built from 435 components in-house at Roger Dubuis’ Geneva manufacture.
A key functional improvement compared to previous versions is the addition of a month corrector, which allows the month indication to be manually set with one simple adjustment. This new upgrade makes regulation much faster and easier, while also preventing over-use of the function.
Further enhancing the Poincon de Geneve-certified RD850 is the addition of an astronomical moonphase integrated at 6 o’clock. This display is engineered to follow the moon’s orbital cycle around the earth, rounded to 29 days, 12 hours, and 45 minutes compared to a standard moonphase mechanism, which typically rounds the cycle of the moon to an approximate 29.5 days, creating a deviation of one day every two to three years. In practical terms, this means the display shows the waxing and waning of the moon almost exactly as it appears in the sky and will remain accurate for around 122 years before requiring adjustment.
Alongside the perpetual calendar, we get a slightly more pared down model in the biretrograde day-date calendar, aptly named the Excalibur Biretrograde Calendar. The model echoes the perpetual calendar with the same impressively compact 40mm case framing the instantly recognizable double retrograde display.
Here, the timepiece is powered by the RD840 movement, which made its debut at Watches and Wonders in 2025 within the 30th Anniversary Excalibur Biretrograde Calendar. You might recall the notable signature of the caliber: a sculpted oscillating weight inspired by the Maison’s first design from 1996. Thanks to this movement architecture and level of finishing, this model also boasts the same prestigious Poincon de Geneve certification.
This year’s edition of the Excalibur Biretrograde Calendar offers sportier and more casual, everyday styling. It swaps the warm rose gold and brown composition of the 2025 edition for 316L stainless steel and cosmic blue, and we also see the addition of a multi-link bracelet alongside the option of the leather strap we got in the previous version.
Both the Excalibur Biretrograde Perpetual Calendar and the new variation of the Excalibur Biretrograde Calendar join the Maison’s catalog today. For more information, including pricing, you can visit Roger Dubuis.
The post Watches & Wonders: Roger Dubuis Debuts an All-New Perpetual Calendar Caliber Alongside a Sporty Version of its Excalibur Biretrograde Calendar appeared first on Worn & Wound.
