News · De Bethune

De Bethune’s DB25 Digitale puts the moon at the centre

Jumping hours, rotating minutes and a spherical moon replace conventional hands on an 82-part blue display.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 4 min read · 3 September 2026

• The 82-part display combines jumping hours, rotating minutes and a central spherical moon.
• In-house calibre DB2144V3 uses twin barrels, a De Bethune balance and triple pare-chute protection.
• De Bethune had not announced price, production quantity or Australian allocation when checked.

De Bethune has returned to digital time display with the DB25 Digitale, a 42mm Grade 5 titanium watch that shows jumping hours, rotating minutes and the phase of the moon without conventional hands. Its face is assembled from 82 elements, turning a mechanically direct indication into one of the manufacture's more elaborate studies in blue.

The layout reads from the outside in. Hours appear digitally through a jumping display, minutes travel around a rotating disc, and a three-dimensional moon sits at the centre. That combination is unusual because each indication speaks a different visual language. One is numerical, one is analogue and one is astronomical, yet all three are organised concentrically.

Eighty-two parts form the dial

De Bethune uses finishing to stop the rings from collapsing into one another. A classical barleycorn guilloché pattern sits beside random guilloché worked into blued titanium. Heat treatment produces a deep range of blue rather than a single flat colour, while the separate textures catch light at different angles.

The brand says 82 elements make up the display. That number matters less as spectacle than as an explanation for the depth visible from the front. Separate surfaces carry barleycorn and random guilloché, while the hours, minutes and central moon occupy distinct concentric zones. The layered effect comes from a constructed display rather than one printed pattern.

At the centre, De Bethune's spherical moon is formed from two polished hemispheres, one in palladium and the other in flame-blued steel. The display is accurate to one lunar day in 1,112 years. That figure assumes the watch remains running and correctly set, of course, but it illustrates how slowly the underlying approximation drifts from the astronomical cycle.

A display driven on ball bearings

A micro ball-bearing system drives both the jumping-hour display and the rotating minute disc. The system supports two different changing indications within the same concentric arrangement, one moving in hourly steps and the other carrying the minutes around the dial. Combining those jobs without crowding the face is the technical centre of the watch.

The in-house DB2144V3 calibre is visible through a sapphire caseback. It uses De Bethune's self-regulating twin barrel, a titanium and grey-gold balance wheel, the manufacture's hairspring with a flat terminal curve, and a triple pare-chute shock-absorbing system. Random guilloché also appears on the deltoid bridge, carrying a texture from the display side into the movement.

De Bethune does not reduce that movement architecture to an anonymous backdrop. The balance material manages inertia, the twin barrels address energy delivery and the shock system protects the regulating organ. These are established parts of the manufacture's technical vocabulary, gathered here to support a display that asks more of the going train than ordinary central hands.

Titanium, polished rather than muted

The DB25 Digitale's 42mm case is Grade 5 titanium, mirror polished and finished with a narrow bezel. Titanium is often left brushed to emphasise utility; polishing it gives this watch the visual formality expected of the DB25 line while keeping the case lighter than an equivalent precious-metal shell.

Openworked, rounded lugs curve away from the case in De Bethune's familiar bullet shape. The watch is paired with an extra-supple dark blue alligator strap and a polished titanium pin buckle. The monochromatic pairing leaves the dial's changing blue surfaces and bright moon to provide the contrast.

Removing conventional hands creates a practical challenge as well as an aesthetic opportunity. The hour must jump cleanly at the top of the hour, while the minute disc needs a fixed reading point that remains obvious against the decoration. De Bethune answers with a strict concentric layout. The displays may be unusual, but their order is not arbitrary.

The arrangement also gives the moon a structural role. It is not tucked into a subsidiary aperture as an extra complication. By occupying the centre, it becomes the point around which the hours and minutes circulate. That makes the astronomical display visible throughout the month, not only when the owner remembers to inspect a small window.

Price and availability

De Bethune announced the DB25 Digitale on 2 September 2026. Its release did not state a retail price, production quantity or separate Australian allocation when checked. The watch joins the DB25 collection, but the announcement does not provide a specific sales or enquiry route.

Those missing commercial details should not be filled with estimates. What the manufacture has confirmed is specific enough: a 42mm polished titanium case, the third-generation DB2144 calibre, 82 dial elements and three distinct forms of time display.

Digital watches are usually praised for speed of reading. This one deliberately slows the eye down. The hour is immediate, but the minutes and moon ask to be followed through layers of colour, texture and motion. The DB25 Digitale uses a digital indication without adopting digital minimalism, and that contradiction is exactly what gives it character.