Do you remember where you were when the Tank à Guichets revival by Cartier dropped in 2025? Called “arguably the most significant jumping-hours launch of the year (so far)” by Oracle Time that July, the defiantly minimalistic 37.6mm by 24.8mm rectangular block of a watch revived as part of the maison’s Privé collection seemed to have burst on the scene riding a wave of Cartier reintroductions that took on a life their own on the internet, from Tanks to Crashes to Baignoires. Given that the brand was riding a years-long ascendancy because of its popularity online, with celebrities, and among younger audiences discovering its vintage charms, Cartier’s Tank à Guichets made the waves it did because it represented the perfect confluence of irresistible brand power, a yearning for an object anchored in history, a rejection of visual complexity as a proxy for high technology and thus desirability, and being honestly just a dang cute watch. Its jumping-hour mechanism added to its anachronistic appeal. 

While it may have appeared to set off a new wave of jumping-hour timepieces, the Tank à Guichets was simply a (high-profile) part of a movement that had been building up energy for years. In the last quarter century alone, we saw the arrival of A. Lange & Söhne’s Zeitwerk collection in 2009, with its prominent large-format digital display of jumping hours and minutes, and the launch of Van Cleef & Arpels’ Pierre Arpels Heure d’Ici & Heure d’Ailleurs jumping-hour travel watch at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie 2014, based on a mechanism developed with movement manufacturer Agenhor that connected a retrograde minutes with two jumping-hour digital displays. Christopher Ward got into the game in 2011 with its limited-edition C9 Harrison Jumping Hour, built on the ETA2824-2 calibre with the jumping-hour module JJ01 by Johannes Jahnke, but it was wound down a few years later and only revived in late 2025 in the form of the C1 Jump Hour Mk V. In the meantime, Christopher Ward collaborated with another British watch brand, Fears, to produce the Fears x Christopher Ward Alliance 01 jumping hour in 2023, based on the former’s JJ01 jumping-hour module applied to a Sellita SW200 movement and the latter’s design language, specifically the Brunswick cushion-shaped case, which up till then had been used for three-handers; Fears went on to release its series of jumping-hour watches with this movement and under its Brunswick collection, which has now produced nine core and special editions. 

From the beginning of the commercial jumping-hour timepieces, in the late 19th century, eschewing traditional watch hands in favour of a digital display was an incarnation of modernity and felt very much of the moment; there was also the practical benefit of avoiding the ambiguity of when hands happen to overlap too closely. The novel format introduced a foundational shift in perceiving time: Reading the time off hands as they sweep past hour markers and along minute tracks meant being shown where one is temporally situated in a day (or at least in a 12-hour cycle) and how much time has elapsed and still is to come, versus being told the time numerically and having only that single data point. It was also a philosophical re-evaluation of how a timepiece captured the spirit of elapsed time: Do jumping hours take away from the romance of time and timekeeping, by de-emphasising the features that suggest a continuously humming machine, or do they add to it, by activating in a dramatic blink-and-you-miss-it way that is the very expression of the fleeting nature of time?

On the technical front, bringing about this mechanical magic takes serious engineering might, especially if the desired effect is an hour disc that snaps instantaneously to advance, at precisely the moment the hour moves forward, rather than sliding into place over a span of a few minutes. Though visually straightforward, the complication depends on accumulating energy over a fixed duration before releasing it very quickly. A typical mechanism has a standard minute wheel connected to a snail cam, which pushes a lever over 60 minutes and builds up mechanical energy in a slowly winding tension spring. At the end of 60 minutes, the lever surpasses the highest point of the snail cam and rapidly releases the energy in the spring, triggering the lever to snap the hour disc forward instantly and in one discrete step; then, a ratchet holds the hour disc in place for the next 60 minutes while the process repeats. (Though this describes the jumping hour, advancing the minutes, seconds and calendar indications can be actuated by the same process.) Instead of a steady dispersion of energy through the gear train over time, the jumping hour intentionally forces the system to break it into consecutive cycles of energy accumulation and release, which is a large and sudden drain on the power reserve. Watchmakers can resolve this with more mainspring barrels (or more powerful springs) to store more energy, separate gear trains for each jumping indication, and perhaps some kind of constant-force mechanism or torque limiter to keep things steady. 

Despite how radical the jumping hour might look, the design and mechanism are at least 150 years old. The Austrian engineer Josef Pallweber patented a jumping-hour mechanism in 1883 widely regarded as the pioneer of the commercial jumping-hour pocket watch (one-off commissions had appeared decades before, notably Antoine Blondeau’s circa 1830). Pallweber licensed his design to watchmakers including IWC Schaffhausen, which invested heavily in its development. But the need for precise handmade movement components kept the jumping hour expensive to produce; the mechanism’s strain on the power reserve made it a less practical choice; and the push for synchronicity and precision on portable chronometers by way of the second hand (for example, in timing railroad schedules and military campaigns) meant that a jumping-hours device became insufficient.

However, its unusual appearance gave the jumping hour a modest uptick in popularity from the 1910s through the 1930s, when design movements such as Art Deco, Bauhaus and Futurism found complementary expression in watches with unorthodox digital displays; jumping-hour watches, while still a boutique product, became fashionable, and their uncluttered dials made them look functional, elegant and daringly modern, in a bold departure from their two- and three-handed contemporaries. Though they were produced in limited quantities, the complication spread among major brands of the day – Audemars Piguet launched its jumping-hour wristwatch in 1921, and Cartier’s Tank à Guichets debuted in 1928 – and in pocket watch and also wristwatch form. 

Vintage advertisements from the era touted the advantages of jumping-hour watches with metal fronts punctuated by cutouts for hours and minutes and seconds with taglines like “No More Broken Crystals” and “Your Initials Engraved”.

Yet, the inherent shortcomings of the jumping-hour watch hampered its reach: It was complex and pricey to build, regulate and repair. This was an especially poor combination by the time the Great Depression hit because cost-effectiveness often meant standard and mass-produced movements. Then interest shifted to watch developments that had seen widespread adoption in military settings, such as chronographs and water-resistant dive watches. That jumping-hour watches offered little intrinsic advantage over conventional movements and hands for time-telling relegated them mostly to being mechanical and aesthetic curiosities. 

The next wave of interest in the jumping-hour watch came as a reaction to electronic watchmaking and its overwhelming dominance in the 1970s and 1980s, but echoing the digital display that the latter had universalised. In 1989, Patek Philippe released the limited-edition Reference 3969, a tonneau-shaped jumping-hour wristwatch with a sweeping central minute hand, to mark the manufacture’s 150th anniversary, and a series of reissues of Cartier’s Tank à Guichets appeared between 1996 and 2005. Around the same period, a generation of high-end independent watchmakers started exploring, innovating and reinterpreting the complication, resulting in François-Paul Journe’s Vagabondage series, Daniel Roth’s Papillon, and Vianney Halter’s Opus 3 for Harry Winston, among others. 

Closer to our current era, the development of self-contained jumping-hour modules that could be added on top of a base calibre (and helped by lower labour costs in certain countries, manufacturing efficiencies, massive economies of scale, and more relaxed expectations of accuracy and build or finish quality) improved the accessibility and serviceability of the jumping hour and broadened both its reach and appeal, since the jumping hour no longer resided only in cohesive, specialised movements. The introduction of the $70-apiece Seagull ST1721 jumping-hour automatic mechanical movement sometime in the years before 2020 democratised the jumping hour among newer entrants such as Maen and Mr Jones Watches. 

Just as it stores and disperses energy, the jumping-hour watch has had a history that was not a linear progression but advanced in successive, iterative spurts. But if the jumping hour never truly went away, it definitely did still feel like it spiked in visibility in just the last few years. Since watch brands do not decide on a group text chain (that we know of) the next thing to explore collectively, it could be that sheer coincidence, multiple discovery, opportunistic marketing, algorithm-fueled propagation, wider attainability, the thirst for the unconventional, the allure of telegraphing insider status and #IYKYK, nostalgia, and classic human psychology of the frequency illusion and confirmation biases can all work in concert to take a trend from niche to mainstream. 

The jumping-hour watch is a curious thing. It was futuristic when it first gained traction, and now that we are living in that future, it has become evocative of the past. It is not evident whether the complication will re-enter hibernation eventually or stay for good, given just how many watch brands have introduced their versions of it by now; in any case, it is not waning yet and likely will not for some time – earlier this year Audemars Piguet launched its Neo Frame Jumping Hour, and Baltic teamed up with SpaceOne to present the Seconde Majeure. For reference, watch dials of ornamental hard stone were wildly popular in 2025 and based on this year’s Watches and Wonders Geneva novelties, that momentum did not seem to be easing. Likewise, case diameters have been shrinking since 2023 and are not on the rebound yet. 

Seeing how throughout its history the jumping-hour watch has remained a source of contrarian inspiration, continual seasons of reinterpretations are all but guaranteed. Even though there are sporadic hints that this cycle of prominence might be starting to wear – on r/watchHotTakes four months ago, a user bemoaning their apparent saturation declared, “Jump hour watches aren’t impressive anymore. Too many brands are copying the same idea and calling it ‘creative’” – if history is anything to go by, we have not seen the last of it yet. The jumping-hour watch never actually disappears; it merely waits for another generation to reimagine it. 

Van Cleef & Arpels Midnight Heure d’Ici & Heure d’Ailleurs

Among the maison’s Watches and Wonders Geneva 2026 highlights, the 38mm rose gold watch with a deceptively prosaic name meaning ‘time here and time elsewhere’ references its 2014 predecessor with the same set of complications – dual time zones with double jumping hours and a retrograde-minutes mechanism – and the same dial layout: the baseline hour in the upper window, and the second time zone’s hour in the lower window. An automatic mechanical movement, redeveloped with 65 hours of power reserve, comprises two sector gears that synchronise the two hour discs with the retrograde minute hand, so that both hour displays advance simultaneously and jump forward at the same moment the retrograde minutes hand resets. A single crown controls winding the movement, plus setting the hours and minutes. The richly decorated chocolate dial features a lozenge-shaped piqué motif in the enamelled centre and a guilloché look on the outer circumference, and appears reddish or near-black depending on the light. 

Chanel Monsieur Superleggera Bleu Edition

Part of the family of watches made of Chanel’s recently developed black-blue matt ceramic, which took five years of development and was unveiled at Watches and Wonders Geneva 2025, the 42mm Monsieur Superleggera Bleu Edition took design cues from motor sports, especially race-car speedometers, for the arrangement of its complications on the enigmatic black guilloché dial: a generous jumping-hour indication at 6 o’clock, retrograde minutes tracked on a 240-degree circular scale at the top, and a small seconds subcounter in between. The manual-winding Calibre 1, designed and developed by Chanel, consists of two barrels and offers 72 hours of power reserve. Chanel’s Monsieur has centred the use of the jumping-hour complication since the collection was introduced in 2016, and adapted it for the sportier Superleggera design starting in 2021. 

Franck Muller Master Jumper Skeleton

For its World Presentation of Haute Horlogerie this year, Franck Muller unveiled the latest interpretation of its triple-jumping complication, housed in both the Curvex CX case (using the MVT 3100-CS1) and the Long Island Evolution case (using the MVT FM 3100-L). Both manual-winding in-house movements incorporate a double-barrel system to enable all five discs to advance instantaneously and in discrete steps, with consistent torque and precision throughout the 30-hour power reserve. The three apertures are laid out in an equidistant manner, adding a challenging constraint to the alignment of the discs and the design of the movement. An openworked construction, with discs and wheels all visible and cutouts machined into the supporting bridge, offers a clear view of the balletic operation of the movement. 

Hautlence Sphere Series 4 

Hautlence kept its Watches and Wonders 2026 presentation focused with a trio of novelties, led by the Sphere Series 4. Instead of a two-dimensional jumping-hour disc, the fourth model in the Sphere collection continues its predecessors’ use of the jumping-hour ball, which appears to float within the left half of the 37mm by 45mm rectangular titanium case, while the right is taken up by the retrograde minutes and its 180-degree suspended minute track. The 12-sided titanium jumping-hour sphere spins through 450 degrees with every change of the hour, and features a sand-blasted coating and engraved numerals filled with white Super-LumiNova. The in-house A82 manual-winding calibre, with 72 hours of power reserve, is carried over from the Sphere 3, but the design of the Sphere 4 strikes a different tone, swapping bright purple for soft olive green and sand. 

Louis Vuitton Escale Répétition Minutes

Developed by La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, the new in-house LFT SO 13.01 manual-winding mechanical movement manages to pack a minute repeater, jumping hour and retrograde minutes, plus 80 hours of power reserve, into the 40mm rose-gold case of the 

Escale Répétition Minutes, and also synchronise two independent time-calculation systems – one for the striking mechanism and the other for the jumping hour – with the gliding reset of the retrograde minutes hand. The flammé guilloché pattern on the dial is done by hand on a traditional rose engine, and emanates from the centre and draws the eye to the minute track that sits along the top of the dial. Meaning “stopover”, the Escale collection gained five new additions during this year’s LVMH Watch Week, all featuring design elements derived from details found on Louis Vuitton’s famous trunks, like the brass brackets and corners that got translated into lugs and minute tracks.

Bremont Terra Nova 38 Jumping Hour Stealth Black

The Terra Nova collection got a major boost when its first jumping-hour watches arrived, in the form of the 38mm bronze limited edition in April 2025. The latest of the series, with a stainless-steel 38mm case and quick-release bracelet finished in black DLC for corrosion and scratch resistance, follows the same montre à guichets design: a jumping hour with a dragging minutes disc and the signature central sweeping second hand hovering above the Bremont Wayfinder logo, all arranged in a vertical line. A robust tool-watch take on the jumping-hour complication, the Terra Nova 38 Jumping Hour Stealth Black references 20th-century trench watches by way of a black leather strap with a removable bund strap. Its BC634 movement, developed with Sellita, offers 56 hours of power reserve, and snaps the jumping-hour wheel forward in under 1/10th of a second. 

This story was first seen as part of the WOW #84 Vision 2026 issue.

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