News · Favre Leuba

Favre Leuba Gives the Chief Tourbillon a Hand-Cut Blue Dial

The second Chief Tourbillon keeps its Chronode movement and 41 mm steel case, but puts five to six hours of rose-engine work on the dial.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 4 min read · 24 October 2026

• Favre Leuba's second Chief Tourbillon keeps the 2025 movement and steel cushion case while giving the 25-piece edition a hand-cut blue dial.
• A barleycorn guilloché pattern takes at least five to six hours on a vintage rose engine and surrounds the tourbillon at six o'clock.
• The 25-piece edition includes steel and rubber options, with official prices of CHF 26,000, GBP 26,000, EUR 30,000 and US$34,500.

There is a particular pleasure in seeing an old mechanical craft given a job beyond nostalgia. Favre Leuba put a tourbillon into its cushion-shaped Chief in 2025, then had to answer the more interesting question of what a second edition could add without pretending the whole watch had been invented again. The answer is visible before the cage starts turning: a blue dial cut by hand on a rose engine dating from the late nineteenth century. This is the Favre Leuba Chief Tourbillon Guilloché.

A blue dial that earns its time at the lathe

The barleycorn pattern radiates out from the centre, but it is the way the grooves interrupt the blue that matters. In the brand's close photographs, the surface has the shifting grain of a woven cloth rather than the flat shine of a painted dial. Favre Leuba says a craftsperson spends at least five to six hours cutting each one on a vintage rose engine. That labour is the substantive change from the 2025 Chief Tourbillon, whose three-dimensional Sablier dial made a very different argument about texture.

Look closely at the furniture and the tourbillon does not have to carry every bit of theatre by itself. Polished, rhodium-plated hour markers and the central hands contain Super-LumiNova C1 X1, which the brand says glows blue, while a blued-steel small-seconds hand sits on the cage at six. Those details give the otherwise elaborate dial a practical hierarchy: hours first, the small seconds and moving mechanism after. Whether the hand-cut pattern calms or complicates that view will probably depend on the light and the wearer.

The familiar Chief case, with a different centre of gravity

Favre Leuba has retained a 41 mm steel cushion case, finished in more than one way, rather than treating the dial change as an excuse to redraw its silhouette. Its product listing adds an 11.45 mm thickness, 22 mm lug width, sapphire crystal and 100 m water-resistance rating. Those figures make the substantial tourbillon opening seem less like an excuse for an oversized case, although the brand does not publish a lug-to-lug measurement. The wrist photograph also makes the bracelet's integrated shape clear.

That restraint is worth noticing. Limited editions can acquire a new colour and a longer name without changing what a buyer sees once the watch is on the wrist; here, the dial treatment asks you to keep looking, because the pattern's apparent depth moves as the angle changes. I can imagine preferring the quieter 2025 Sablier execution on some days. The more I look at this blue surface beside the exposed cage, though, the more the contrast feels like the point rather than a contest for attention.

Chronode's movement remains the mechanical anchor

Turn the watch over and the manual-winding FL T01 is still the centre of the story. Favre Leuba identifies its base as the Chronode C502 and says Jean-François Mojon reworked it for the brand. It has 23 jewels, beats at 21,600 vibrations per hour and runs for about 60 hours on a full wind. The 14.85 mm tourbillon cage is unusually prominent on the dial, so the hand-cut texture frames a moving assembly instead of simply filling the space around a set of conventional hands.

The bridge over that cage takes its shape from Favre Leuba's hourglass emblem and supports the small-seconds display. Across the back, the brand describes an hourglass relief against a laser-engraved surface, with blue screws punctuating the movement. The finishing is not hidden under the bracelet or reserved for a press photograph of the dial. The supplied case-back image shows the visual work continuing on the side of the watch that usually spends its day against a wrist.

A brushed steel bracelet with polished centre links comes fitted to the watch, and Favre Leuba includes an integrated blue FKM rubber strap. Both belong to the same case rather than making the extra strap feel like a generic accessory. The rubber could make the colour scheme more continuous; the steel puts a cooler frame around the dial. Neither changes the basic proposition, which is a traditional decorative technique placed beside a conspicuously modern mechanical display. It is a pairing that could have become noisy. Here, the craft is legible.

Favre Leuba Chief Tourbillon Guilloché pricing and availability

Favre Leuba announced the Chief Tourbillon Guilloché on 23 October 2026 as a limited edition of 25 pieces. Its product page offers pre-booking and says shipments are due in March 2027. Published prices are CHF 26,000, GBP 26,000, EUR 30,000 and US$34,500, with the steel bracelet and blue FKM strap included. The brand has not published an Australian list price or local availability for this edition. At those figures, the interesting comparison is not simply how many complications are on the dial, but how much of the watch's character has been made by a person's hand.