It’s a testament to the greatness of Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak that the brand can continue to iterate on it time and time again without the model ever feeling stale. We’ve seen versions of the Gérald Genta-designed icon in stainless steel, ceramic, and yellow gold. It’s been augmented with simple date displays and wildly complex tourbillons. Everyone from Alyx’s Matthew Williams and John Mayer to Travis Scott and KAWS has remixed the sporty timepiece. And yet, we’re still out here hungry for more. The Royal Oak is relentless.
Today, with 2025 marking AP’s 150th anniversary, the brand has just unveiled its first big batch of releases for the year—and, to the surprise of literally no one, there are a bunch of enticing new Royal Oaks in the mix. Let’s dive in for a closer look.
The new Royal Oaks improve on its most prestigious function
The perpetual calendar—a function that can accurately track the day, date, and month until the year 2100—is one of the most technically challenging complications in watches. Audemars Piguet refers to it as the Quantieme Perpetuel, and it’s become a fixture on its Royal Oak. “It’s not an overstatement that the Royal Oak QP has sparked a mass understanding and appreciation of perpetual calendars,” John Mayer, an AP collaborator, told GQ last year.
Now, AP has revamped its QP for its 150th anniversary. It might be hard to appreciate in photographs alone, but the watch’s function has dramatically improved. Typically, you need a small tool (they look sort of like small fountain pens) to set a perpetual calendar, which makes the whole ordeal quite a hassle. Now, wearers will be able to change every reading on the watch through its crown alone. For someone who doesn’t actually wear a QP, that might not sound like a big deal, but this is the type of stuff that drives collectors crazy (For proof, see Ben Clymer’s recent list of gripes at Hodinkee.)
