In 2024, Nomos Glashütte exhibited at Watches and Wonders for the first time. It would not be unfair to say that few attendees expected the German watchmaker to be one of the most discussed of the whole fair – which was, after all, the brand’s first showing at a top-tier international event in five years. New releases for the couple of years prior had been solid, sensible choices: mostly new dial colours, or case sizes. Meanwhile, the cultural conversation for watch fans centred around trends like rainbow gem-setting, cartoon characters on dials or wild experiments with Super-LumiNova. These days, if you wanted a simple automatic with personality – a defining characteristic of a company that once produced a Wes Anderson-worthy ‘encyclopaedia’ with entries that included ‘life goals of Nomos watchmakers’ and ‘straps that smell bad’ – the energy had passed to a new generation of micro-brands (and the mainstream watchmakers quick enough to imitate them). Not so long ago, colourful and affordable ideas executed with wit and self-deprecation were true rarities in the watch world, but suddenly they were everywhere: from Studio Underd0g to Seiko, Baltic to Zodiac.

I was among those naysayers wondering if Nomos had lost its momentum. But we were about to witness a masterclass. On the first day of the fair, Nomos pulled back the cloth on a collection of not one, five, or even 10 new limited editions, but a full month’s worth: 31 different versions of its Tangente 38 Date. The collection was ostensibly linked to the 175th anniversary of watchmaking in Glashütte, a milestone that actually took place in 2020, but that didn’t matter one bit to the crowds visiting the brand’s stand, holding four or five of the poppy, effervescently named references at once, trying to pick a favourite. Limited to 175 pieces per model, and priced 175 dollars, euros or pounds cheaper than normal, these watches were just cool. It defied further intellectualisation: Nomos had reminded the world that it could still surprise us, and that it didn’t need celebrities, emojis, fashion designers or muppets. It just needed the courage to trust its Berlinerblau design studio, as it always has.

The mic-drop effectiveness of the Tangente 38 Date collection underscored Nomos’s almost unique position in the industry. With its pricing sweet spot between £1,500 and £4,000, it sits squarely in the mainstream, an alternative to the likes of Longines, Frederique Constant or entry-level TAG Heuer. But with an estimated annual production of just over 20,000 – as well as the fact that it is independently owned – it enjoys an alternative status in the mix. Since the launch of its debut collections in 1992, there has been an uncanny stability about Nomos’s product lineup. When it comes to steadfast loyalty to an aesthetic, you can rank it alongside industry heavyweights like Rolex or its Glashütte neighbour, A. Lange & Söhne.

“Nomos tells a particular story that allows the brand to sit independently from its rivals within the premium or luxury competitive sector of the market,” says Eric Macaire, Executive Director of Global Buying and Merchandising for Watches of Switzerland. “The brand’s ethos is deeply rooted in its Bauhaus designs and use of playful colour palettes that translate into an identity that never needs to try hard or follow any trend. In a world where complex and functional designs can dominate the watch market, Nomos effortlessly and confidently remains true to its identity.” Indeed, far from the 31-piece Tangente 38 Date launch being Nomos’s way of jumping onto the trend for brightly-coloured watches, it’s actually an idea the brand pioneered long before it was the norm. In 2004, it released the ‘Super 30’ set: 30 hand-wound Tangente designs with wildly colourful dials and jolly, impish names.

“People don't realise how long Nomos has been making limited editions,” says Paul Meister, a US collector who has owned 27 different watches from the brand over the last 13 years. “It’s part of their DNA. I like the playfulness of these limited editions. I mean, they're already a pretty playful company in general, but the little tweaks that they do and the colour options, that's what interests me.” 

Nomos CEO Uwe Ahrendt, who has run the company since 2000, seeing it grow from 30 employees to more than 200 today, confirms that Nomos’s stability is fundamental to its identity. “Tangente has been our best-selling model for more than 30 years; the four watch models that we launched in 1992 are still the ones that are most in demand. The watch industry is very traditional, and we are lucky that the designs of our watches have become classics.”

Still, there have been big changes along the way. The company has transitioned away from dependence on external movement suppliers, most notably developing its proprietary escapement, the ‘swing system’, in 2014 (Ahrendt calls it “our moon landing”), and then introducing its own family of in-house automatic calibres, the neomatik, the following year. A €15m investment, it was a substantial gamble for a young brand, but the commitment to mechanical improvement, and the value proposition that it represents, is as central to the brand’s appeal as its post-Bauhaus aesthetic.

“I see people complain about the pricing for new models,” says Meister. “But what they're doing is actually really impressive. People look at plain dials without applied indexes and say: ‘What are we paying for?’ But these movements aren't cheap.”

Since the introduction of its first neomatik ranges, Nomos has continued to develop new in-house movements – some automatic, others hand-wound – which stand out for their slim height and level of finishing at the price. At the same time, despite the dominance of the founding families (Tangente, Orion, Ludwig and Tetra), there have been new designs. Not everything has been a hit: the Autobahn range failed to endear itself to fans, while last year eyebrows were raised over the Tangente 2date, a design that featured both a peripheral date ring and a traditional window to display the same date. Maybe it’s that quirky personality making itself known again – a trait about which we can hardly complain in an often po-faced watch world.

What is undeniable is that Nomos has recently found success with watches that, while in keeping with its design philosophy, are much more mainstream than anything else in its stable. The Club, Nomos’s only round watch with a proper bezel and slightly beefier proportions, was first launched in 2007, and for the first decade of its life played the role of humble entry-level watch to perfection. Rarely the focus of much attention, the original reference was discontinued in 2017 when Nomos leaned into its status as a first ‘proper’ watch by launching the Club Campus, marketed overtly at the graduation-gift market. 

More significant was the addition of the brand’s first-ever metal bracelets along with the bulkier Club Sport in 2019. All of a sudden, Nomos had a viable alternative to everyday sports watches from titans like Rolex or Omega, with movements that matched up in many respects and prices that were more than competitive. It also helped Nomos broaden its customer base, both geographically and in terms of age. “We reached a much younger audience with these watches,” says Ahrendt. “It’s sportier and more robust.”

The Club range has grown to include 32 models (the second-largest family after the Tangente), with the brand’s smallest and largest automatics both represented (34mm and 42mm, respectively). A panoply of colours shines out – the brightest in the entire lineup by far. In 2023, Nomos even revived the original Club design. But now the Club takes perhaps its greatest step towards true maturity as a collection: its first complication.

Launching at Watches and Wonders 2025 is the Club Sport neomatik world time, a 40mm stainless steel range comprising two non-limited editions and six limited versions in eye-catching colourways. With names like ‘Canyon’ and ‘Volcano’, they provide a little of the globetrotting romance essential to any world-time launch, and with dials in various blues, green, sandy beige, orange and grey, they satisfy those quintessentially Nomos criteria: colour and choice. 

The watches run on a brand new in-house movement, calibre DUW 3202, which is nearly 1mm thinner than the DUW 5201 world time calibre and boasts a newer regulation system as well as a different dial-side configuration. Whereas the Zürich world time – Nomos’s established travel watch, and its most expensive model in stainless steel – shows home time on an exposed 24-hour wheel at three o’clock, the Club Sport neomatik world time uses a 24-hour day/night subdial, which allows for the brand to riff on classic ‘GMT-style’ design tropes while decluttering the complication’s appearance. Mechanically, the world time functions similarly, with a concealed pusher at eight o’clock to set your home time, and a very visible one at two o’clock to advance your local, or travel, time, which cycles the city ring around the edge against a subtle indicating mark at 12 o’clock. The display doesn’t account for the planet’s various daylight-saving arrangements, opting instead for as clean a dial as possible, but hidden within the minute track you will find discreet notation for at-a-glance tracking of the time difference around the globe.

The new models are water resistant to 100m, have display case backs and interchangeable straps and – impressively for their general class – measure just 9.9mm thick. In watch geek parlance, it’s a very literal realisation of the ‘GADA’ watch: ‘go anywhere, do anything’. As befits the watch’s complexity, it’s more expensive than the other Club models, with a launch price of £3,940, but that’s still a whole lot cheaper than other world-time or many dual-time watches out there. 

It will be interesting to gauge the performance of a watch that combines one of the brand’s most commercially important designs with complicated watchmaking – arguably, in both technical and aesthetic senses, the furthest it has travelled from its minimalist roots. If Nomos is going to maintain the “continuous growth” that Ahrendt says it has enjoyed under his tenure, however, it needs to embody the ‘GADA’ spirit – that’s ‘go anywhere, do anything’. Having established a beachhead in the world of everyday sports watches, the new Club Sport could be the perfect push into new territory.