Rolex Perpetual Padellone: Everything You Need to Know (Including Why It Is Not a Perpetual Calendar)

Rolex has done something it almost never does: it has taken a collector nickname and made it the official model name. Unveiled in Milan on 15 September 2026, the Perpetual Padellone is a 39mm complete calendar with a moonphase, the second model in the dressy Perpetual collection that launched with the 1908 in 2023, and the most complicated watch the Crown has released since the Sky-Dweller in 2012. It comes in Everose gold on a Settimo bracelet (£60,700) or brown alligator (£49,150), and in platinum with an ice blue dial on black alligator (£55,300), and it runs on a new 5Hz movement, calibre 7190, that carries 30 patent applications.

You may have seen it on your Instagram feed already, but we are here to answer the questions that matter: is it a perpetual calendar killer, how do you set it, what does it cost, where does it sit in the Rolex stable, and what are the details everyone else missed?

Why is it called the Padellone?

Padellone is Italian for big frying pan. Italian dealers coined it for Rolex ref. 8171, a 38mm triple calendar with moonphase built from 1949 to around 1953, whose broad, flat case and slim bezel put them in mind of kitchenware. Somewhere between 1,200 and 1,400 were made across all metals, only a couple of hundred are well documented today, and good examples now change hands for well into six figures. It was never an Oyster (that job fell to the smaller 6062 a year later), and it was the last time Rolex sold a moonphase with a full calendar until this week.

Rolex launched the new one in Milan rather than Geneva, which is fitting for an Italian nickname: most of the collector market for the original is Italian too. The new watch borrows the 8171’s layout, with day and month in twin apertures at 12, a blue date hand with a crescent moon at its tip reading against a track at the dial’s edge, and a moon with a face. The one real departure is the pair of applied numerals at 3 and 9, which the original never had.

Where does it sit in the Rolex stable?

In the Perpetual collection, which is Rolex’s non-Oyster, dress-led line. It launched in 2023 with the time-only 1908, and the Padellone is its second model and its first complication. Think of it as the collection’s flagship: same 39mm footprint and bezel language as the 1908, same Settimo bracelet, but with the most ambitious movement Rolex has put in a dress watch. Across the whole catalogue, only the Sky-Dweller comes close for complexity.

Is the Perpetual Padellone a perpetual calendar?

No, and Rolex’s naming does not help. “Perpetual” here is the name of the collection, and before that of the self-winding Perpetual rotor Rolex introduced in 1931; it has never meant perpetual calendar in Rolex-speak. The Padellone is a complete calendar, showing day, date, month and moonphase, with an annual mechanism behind it. Personally, I think that is the better watch, and here is why.

Nobody needs a perpetual calendar. A conventional perpetual knows the length of every month, leap years included, and will run correctly until 28 February 2100, at which point it will assume a 29th that is not coming and need a nudge. IWC went further in 2024 with the Portugieser Eternal Calendar, whose 400-year gear skips the three secular non-leap years and keeps the date honest until at least 3999, while its moonphase is calculated to drift by a single day in 45 million years. It is a beautiful piece of mathematics, 44.4mm across and 14.9mm thick, and it cost CHF 150,000 at launch. Not one person who buys it will be alive to check whether it got 2100 right, let alone 3999.

There is a more practical problem too. A perpetual calendar only stays perpetual while the watch is running. Leave it in a drawer for a long weekend and every one of those clever cams and levers is sitting on the wrong day. Correcting it is the fiddliest job in watchmaking: multiple recessed pushers, a sequence to respect and, on many movements, hours of the day when touching the correctors risks damaging the mechanism. The complication designed to save you effort ends up demanding more of it than a plain date window. I can already hear you shouting that you have a winder. What happens when there is a power cut while you are away, or when you want to travel with the thing? I rest my case.

How does the Haplos annual calendar work?

Here is the problem Rolex has focused on. An ordinary calendar watch, whether a simple date or a full triple calendar, assumes every month has 31 days. Four times a year you wake up the morning after a 30-day month to find it a day out, and once more after February, and every time you have to reset the watch.

Rolex’s fix is the patented Haplos system, which teaches the movement the difference between 30 and 31-day months. That makes the Padellone an annual calendar in function: it needs one correction a year, when February turns into March, and otherwise gets on with its life. Haplos does this with just two extra components coupled to the date mechanism, an additional carrier finger and an annual lever, and the clever part is where the programming lives. The pattern of long and short months is cut into the back of the month disc itself, which is how the watch knows February is short. Compared with the stack of parts under a perpetual it is almost insultingly simple, which is rather the point.

The second upgrade is that the whole calendar jumps at once. At midnight the day, date and month change together in a fraction of a second, with a patent application filed for the mechanism, so you never see the month disc creeping into position an hour early while the date hand loiters.

How do you set the Padellone?

Every indication, moonphase included, can be corrected at any time of day without harming the movement, which is not something you can say of most perpetuals. The corrections are made through four correctors set into the case flanks, operated with a stylus. Rolex does have a crown-based alternative, the Ring Command bezel that sets the Sky-Dweller’s functions, but that system relies on a rotating Oyster bezel geared into the movement, and the Padellone’s fixed, 1908-style bezel and non-Oyster case give it nowhere to live. Yes, the stylus is not ideal. But a watch you set once a year on 1 March is still rather elegant.

On top of that, Rolex has quietly built a Moon Calendar page on its website. Drag to today’s date and it tells you exactly how many presses to give the moonphase corrector, and shows you the current phase.

How does the moonphase work?

Unlike almost every other moonphase watch, there is no aperture hiding part of the moon. A fully visible blue enamel disc makes one rotation every lunar month of 29.53 days, carrying a full moon and a new moon cut from meteorite, the new moon darkened with a dark blue PVD coating. The two discs take turns aligning with a triangular pointer above the display, so what you read is the time elapsed between one new moon and the next. Both moons wear a pad-printed face, a wink at the 8171, whose moon also had a face and a sky full of stars.

That will split the room: seeing both moons at once, rather than one sliding behind an aperture, is clever but takes some getting used to, and I am still deciding whether I like it. Rolex has not published a drift figure for the Padellone’s moon. The Cellini Moonphase it effectively replaces, discontinued in 2023, was rated to a day’s error in 122 years, against roughly two and a half years for a basic 59-tooth moonphase.

What is new in calibre 7190?

Calibre 7190 is an evolution of the 7135 that debuted in last year’s Land-Dweller, so it beats at 5Hz (36,000vph) rather than Rolex’s usual 4Hz, uses the Dynapulse silicon escapement, a Syloxi silicon hairspring and a ceramic balance staff, and gives 66 hours of power reserve. Of the 30 patent applications Rolex quotes, only two are exclusive to the Padellone; the rest are carried over from the 7135 architecture, which tells you how much of this watch is Land-Dweller under the hood. Through the sapphire caseback you get a cut-out oscillating weight in yellow gold and bridges with Rolex Côtes de Genève. It is certified under the Superlative Chronometer standard that Rolex tightened this year with three new test criteria covering magnetism, reliability and sustainability.

Case, dial and versions

At 39mm across and 12.2mm thick, with 50m of water resistance, the case follows the 1908 template: a bezel domed on top and finely fluted underneath, applied Arabic numerals at three and nine, faceted batons elsewhere and a grained dial with a satin ring at the edge. Note that this is not an Oyster: there is a screw-down back but no screw-down crown, and 50m is dress-watch territory, exactly as it was on the original 8171.

Dials are intense white in Everose and ice blue in platinum. The seven-link Settimo bracelet, introduced on the 1908 last year, closes with a concealed Crownclasp; the alligator straps get a Dualclasp.

How much does the Rolex Perpetual Padellone cost?

The Everose Padellone on brown alligator is £49,150, the same watch on the Settimo bracelet is £60,700 and the platinum version on black alligator is £55,300. It is a regular production model rather than a limited edition, and it is available through Rolex’s official retailers, though expect the usual waiting lists.

More details at Rolex.