Cartier's new Santos-Dumont watch and Santos de Cartier chronograph, unveiled during Watches & Wonders 2026, have been available in Cartier boutiques nationwide since June 1, 2026.
The centerpiece of the new LM-size Santos-Dumont is a gilded obsidian dial cut to 0.3 mm, with a flexible yellow gold bracelet of 394 links and the hand-wound 430 MC manufacture movement.
The Santos de Cartier chronograph revisits the 2020 model in gold, gold and steel, and all-steel versions, powered by the automatic 1904-CH MC movement with a 47-hour power reserve.
Both watches trace their lineage to 1904, when aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont asked Louis Cartier for a watch he could read mid-flight, the piece Cartier calls the first modern wristwatch.
The Santos has moved from the fair floor to the boutique case. Unveiled during Watches & Wonders 2026, Cartier's new Santos-Dumont watch and Santos de Cartier chronograph have been available in Cartier boutiques nationwide since June 1, 2026, putting two of the maison's headline novelties within reach of American collectors just weeks after their debut.
The two releases work as a pair. The Santos-Dumont looks back, reinterpreting what Cartier calls a great classic of the design world with vintage accents and a hard stone dial. The chronograph looks forward, extending the same lineage into a complication built around motion. Both carry the name of Alberto Santos-Dumont, the aviator who in 1904, eager to read the time while flying, asked Louis Cartier to create the watch that started it all.
The centerpiece of the new LM-size Santos-Dumont is its dial in gilded obsidian, a feat of gem-cutting in volcanic stone from Mexico. Tiny air bubbles trapped in the material give the stone its iridescent reflections and make each watch unique. Cut to just 0.3 mm in depth, the dial is delicate enough to be comparable to glass, then polished to reveal its radiance.
The bracelet answers the dial. Inspired by the flexibility of the first made-to-measure metal watch bracelets the maison developed in the 1920s, the yellow gold mesh is composed of 15 rows and a total of 394 links, each 1.15 mm thick, machined, finished, and assembled at the Cartier Manufacture.
The new Santos-Dumont emphasises its resemblance to the original shape, and the bracelet, at once fluid and precious, is an expression of contemporary elegance.Pierre Rainero, Cartier, Director of Image, Style, and Heritage
The watch keeps the codes of the 1904 original: Roman numerals, visible screws, a circular-grained crown set with a blue cabochon. Inside is the 430 MC hand-wound mechanical manufacture movement, in a case measuring 43.5 by 31.4 mm and 7.3 mm thick, water-resistant to 3 bar. The range also gains two new LM-size models with silvered satin-finish sunray dials, one in yellow gold and one in platinum.
The second novelty revisits the Santos de Cartier chronograph launched in 2020, refining it for everyday wear without surrendering performance. The new LM-size case measures 47.5 by 39.8 mm at 11.6 mm thick and comes in gold, gold and steel, and all-steel versions, framed by eight polished screws and a heptagonal crown set with a synthetic blue faceted spinel, or a sapphire on the gold model.
The dial alternates satin and sunray finishes under black sword-shaped hands coated with Super-LumiNova, with three counters: seconds at 6 o'clock, minutes at 3, hours at 9, each circled by a ring flashed in yellow gold or rhodium depending on the version. Cartier puts the finishing process at more than 70 steps, from the stamping of the dial to the final protective layer.
Speed was one of Santos-Dumont's chief concerns. His most significant aviation record, set in 1906, covered 220 meters in 21 seconds, and the chronograph is positioned as the instrument of that inheritance. Power comes from the automatic 1904-CH MC movement, its name a nod to the year the first Santos was created, with two push buttons, a 47-hour power reserve, and water resistance to 10 bar, roughly 100 meters. The bracelet carries the SmartLink sizing system and QuickSwitch interchangeability, with a second strap supplied: semi-matt dark grey alligator for the yellow gold version, black rubber for the gold and steel and all-steel models.
Few watch designs survive on heritage alone, and the Santos has never had to. Its square bezel and exposed screws remain among the most recognizable signatures in watchmaking, and the line's endurance owes as much to disciplined evolution as to its origin story. The 2026 novelties follow that pattern: the silhouette stays, the materials and movements advance.
The pairing also shows how Cartier reads its own history. The Santos-Dumont novelty leans into the personal style of the man, the dandy who treated dressing as seriously as flying. The chronograph leans into what he did, the boundary-pushing that made the name worth borrowing in the first place. One watch honors the wardrobe, the other the ambition.
Both novelties have been available in Cartier boutiques nationwide since Monday, June 1, 2026. Collectors who followed the Watches & Wonders 2026 presentations from a distance now have the more useful version of the experience: the watches themselves, on the wrist, in the metal.
For a collection born from a conversation between a watchmaker and an aviator, the measure of these new pieces will be taken the same way it was more than a century ago, in the wearing. The Santos-Dumont and the Santos de Cartier chronograph are now in boutiques for exactly that purpose.
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