Rolex tells the Oyster's century through its wearers

A century counted in wrists

On 12 May 2026 Rolex publishes a film on its own YouTube channel to mark one hundred years of the Oyster, its first waterproof wristwatch. It runs 23 minutes and 17 seconds, is filed under Film and Animation rather than under any product category, and carries subtitles in seventeen languages. As read on 21 September 2026 it has been viewed about 70.6 million times.¹

The description under it sets out the argument the film then makes, and the argument is not an engineering one. "In the beginning, there was the Oyster. Rolex's first waterproof wristwatch, the blueprint for a century of watchmaking innovation. A watch that symbolizes modernity and accompanies human achievement."¹ The verb in the third sentence is the one that matters. The watch accompanies. What it accompanies is somebody else's achievement.

Where the proof is kept

Rolex states the case for the object twice in the same paragraph, and both times the evidence is a person. "One hundred years after its creation, the Oyster continues its perpetual revolution. A reliable, robust and practical object, the Oyster has spent a century on the wrists of those facing the toughest conditions. A century that saw the Oyster evolve into a family of watches that are now considered definitive benchmarks."¹

Reliability, robustness and practicality are asserted in three adjectives and then left. The sentence that carries the weight is the one about wrists. A company with a sealed case, a self-winding rotor and a certification programme of its own devising chooses, for its centenary, to measure the century in the people who wore the watch rather than in the mechanisms inside it.

Even the closing claim is handed to somebody else. The models are "now considered definitive benchmarks", in the passive, by parties the sentence does not name.¹ Rolex declines to make the judgement in its own voice and reports it as one already arrived at elsewhere, which is the same move as measuring a century in wrists: the brand supplies the object and lets the record be written on it.

The method is as old as the product. In 1927 Hans Wilsdorf invited Mercedes Gleitze, the first British woman to swim the English Channel, to wear an Oyster during her crossing. Rolex's own account of its partnerships describes Wilsdorf realising that the world could be a "living laboratory" for his timepieces, and names Gleitze the first Rolex Testimonee.² The centenary film applies the same logic across a hundred years at once

The length is part of the claim

Twenty-three minutes is not an advertising format. It commits the viewer to a sitting rather than an impression. The filing tells the same story: Rolex places it under Film and Animation, alongside entertainment, and not under a category that would mark it as promotion.¹ The seventeen subtitle tracks say who it is for, which is everyone at once rather than a lead market.

The film is also not the whole of the anniversary. It is one part of a programme Rolex has staged across 2026. The newsroom dates the opening of that programme to 14 April 2026, when the company published an entry headed "Celebrating the century of the Oyster" alongside its new watches for the year.³ Watches in April, the film in May, an exhibition in June: the centenary is released in instalments rather than announced once.

The same argument, built as a room

From 10 to 28 June 2026 Rolex holds an exhibition called Oyster Story at the West Bund Dome in Shanghai. The main pavilion is given to the Oyster, "its origins, its evolutions and the iconic wearers who have helped forge the reputation of Rolex watches", and the first floor carries "an exclusive display of 100 portraits of iconic Rolex watch wearers".³ A second pavilion, named Superlative, is given to the watchmaking.

The split between the two pavilions is the same split the film makes. The technical case gets its own room; the century gets the wearers. Rolex describes the exhibition's cinema room as screening a film retracing the history of the Oyster, one that shows "how the legend of this iconic watch was forged on the wrists of pioneers and trailblazers who have shaped the modern world".³ The company does not state whether that film is this one.

Rolex calls the Shanghai exhibition the opening of a broader programme and says further chapters are still to come.³ It credits no agency, director or production company for the film, on the channel or anywhere in the trade press searched.¹