The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry published its September figures on 20 October 2026, and on the face of it the month was the strongest of the year: exports rose 11.7 percent year on year to CHF 2.23 billion, the fifth consecutive monthly gain and an acceleration on July's 9.6 percent and August's 9.1 percent (Keystone-SDA via Bluewin). Across the first nine months of the year, shipments now stand at CHF 19.5 billion, 2.7 percent ahead of the same period in 2025 (swissinfo). After two years in which the industry's monthly data mostly pointed down, a run of five green months reads like a turn. Most of September's size, though, is a matter of what it is being measured against.
The headline is a base-effect story
The single largest contributor to the month was the United States, where exports rose about 86 percent (swissinfo). That is not a demand surge so much as a rebound: US shipments had plunged a year earlier, after the 39 percent tariff that took effect in August 2025 pulled forward orders and then emptied the pipeline, so September 2026 is being compared with an artificially low September 2025 (Keystone-SDA via Bluewin). The same effect runs the other way in China, where exports fell 14.2 percent — a drop the Federation attributes to an unfavourable base rather than a fresh deterioration (Jing Daily). France's +128 percent belongs in the same category of outsized swings off distorted comparisons. Strip the arithmetic of the prior year out, and the clean signals are smaller: Hong Kong up 3.0 percent, Japan up 12.3 percent, and the European Union as a whole up 15.5 percent (Keystone-SDA via Bluewin).
The part that is not an illusion sits at the bottom
The more interesting number is where the growth landed by price. Watches with an export value under CHF 200 rose 30 percent, and those between CHF 200 and CHF 500 rose 52 percent, while watches at CHF 3,000 and above — the segment that carried the industry through the downturn — grew a comparatively modest 9.9 percent (Keystone-SDA via Bluewin). For most of the past two years the story has been the reverse: unit volumes falling, value holding up only because the expensive end kept selling. September points the other way, with the cheapest watches growing fastest. It is one month, and export value is not the same as sell-through, but it is the first clear sign in a while that demand at the accessible end of the market is doing something other than shrinking — the same soft spot the Deloitte supplier study and the Montblanc cuts in Le Locle were both reading from the cost side earlier this month.
What September does and does not establish
The Federation reports export value, not units, so the month tells you how many francs left Switzerland, not how many watches (Jing Daily). That matters when the fastest-growing segments are the cheap ones, where a small value gain can represent a large jump in volume. What September establishes is narrow but real: the comparison base is now working in the industry's favour, the US line will keep flattering the year-on-year figures until the 2025 tariff slump has fully washed through, and underneath the noise the low end has started to move. The honest test of a recovery is the opposite — a month when the base is neutral and the number is still positive. On current momentum the first of those arrives early in 2026's final quarter; until then, a 11.7 percent headline is best read as a strong month built partly on a weak one a year ago.
Sources: Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry September 2026 figures, reported by Keystone-SDA via Bluewin (20 October 2026); swissinfo / Bloomberg, "Swiss Watch Exports Rise for Fifth Month"; Jing Daily, "Swiss watch exports to China fall 14.2% in September".
