Movements and Complications

The Thinnest Watches in the World

From Jaeger-LeCoultre’s early foray into slim calibers to Bulgari’s modern domination of world records, here is the ultimate guide to ultrathin watches.

By 

Cait Bazemore

 |  August 15, 2025

When you think of the thinnest watches in the world, a few names probably come to mind: Bulgari, Piaget, and Richard Mille. Yes, in recent years, a handful of maisons have dominated design when it comes to ultrathin timekeepers, but the race to create the thinnest watch possible is nothing new. Many of today’s thinnest watches are far more about achieving admittedly astounding technical feats than they are about the simplicity of telling time. However, the original slim revolution began in an effort for comfort and practicality.

In This Article

• The Origins of Ultrathin Watchmaking
• The First Records Set for Ultrathin Watches
• The Modern Race to the Thinnest Watch
• The Thinnest Watches in the World

The Origins of Ultrathin Watchmaking

Tracing back as far as 18th-century pocket watches, we see the demand for more streamlined watch designs. This could not be achieved without consideration of the mechanics, with the movement taking up a bulk of the real estate within a watch case. Jean-Antoine Lepine (a French watchmaker to King Louis XV) was one of the first to experiment with the architecture of his calibers, the mechanism that powers the watch, to accomplish something sleeker. In short, he refined the thick “sandwich” style of plates commonly used in pocket-watch movements by eliminating the top plate that held the gear train and replacing it with a slimmer series of cocks and bridges. The result was a dramatically thinner movement and, in turn, a thinner, more wearable pocket watch. 

It would be another couple hundred years before the real race for the thinnest would begin. In fact, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s founding was thanks to strides in the slim revolution. In the early 1900s, Edmond Jaeger conceived several ideas for ultrathin movements and put out a call for watchmakers who could execute his ideas. Who answered but none other than Jacques-David LeCoultre, the grandson of Antoine LeCoultre, who had founded his namesake brand a century prior. Together, the pair created Caliber 145, or the couteau, meaning “knife” in French, a slim movement measuring just 1.38mm thick. It was revolutionary. 

The First Records Set for Ultrathin Watches

A few decades later, Audemars Piguet officially set the first record for the thinnest wristwatch movement with Caliber 9ML, a hand-wound movement measuring only 1.64mm thick. Soon after, others followed, with brands like Vacheron Constantin and Piaget getting in the mix. While some would fade and focus on alternative specialties, Piaget’s passion for ultrathin timekeepers would stick, and by 1960, the maison would set the first record for the world’s thinnest automatic movement: Caliber 12P, measuring 2.3mm. (Automatic movements are, by nature, thicker than manual movements due to the rotor.) 

The quartz crisis of the 1970s and ’80s changed the game for traditional watchmakers on all fronts, including the competition for thinness. Since quartz timepieces lacked the stacks of gears and mainsprings, watchmakers could manufacture them extremely flat with relative ease. During this period, brands continued to put up a good fight, but it was hard to compete with the power of quartz. Thankfully, the quartz craze was short-lived, and by the new millennium, the battle of the slimmest mechanical watch started to heat up again. 

The Modern Race to the Thinnest Watch 

A decade into the 21st century, a new challenge swept the watchmaking industry: the ultrathin timepiece. Here, key players like Piaget remained strong while new blood entered the competition. Today, Bulgari has notched a whopping 10 record-breaking thinnest models in its Octo Finissimo line, while Konstantin Chaykin holds the record for the thinnest working prototype. Next, we’ll dive deeper into today’s record setters and the models that put them on the map. 

The Thinnest Watches in the World

These impressive timepieces blend cutting-edge engineering with sleek, minimalist designs.

Piaget

Piaget is the longest-standing contender in the game of thinnest watches, with its first entry dating back to 1957 with the manually wound Caliber 9P measuring 2.0mm thick. In more recent years, the maison has notched three world records. Even though Piaget’s offerings have since been beaten, the brand’s commitment to slim timekeepers for nearly 70 years is worthy of celebration. 

Altiplano

In the modern era, the maison has used its Altiplano line as the backdrop for its thinnest designs. Piaget set a new record in 2014 with the Piaget Altiplano 900P, the thinnest mechanical watch at the time. Here, the movement and the watch are quite literally one entity altogether, measuring 3.65mm. In a typical watch, you have a midcase, a caseback, and a bezel. In the 900P, Piaget merged the midcase and caseback into one unit, then transformed the case into the baseplate. Here, there’s no dial, the hands are integrated into the movement, and the gear wheels and upper bridges are all on the same level as the hands. Essentially, the watchmaker builds the movement directly onto the case, placing each component from the front of the watch before sealing it with the bezel and sapphire glass. 

Piaget continued to build on this design in 2017 with the next evolution, the Altiplano Ultimate 910P — then the thinnest time-only automatic watch — which measured 4.3mm. Three years later, the maison outdid itself again with the Altiplano Ultimate Concept, clocking in at just 2.0mm thick, thanks to the signature integrated design of the case and caliber. In 2024, the brand conquered new territory with the Altiplano Ultimate Concept Tourbillon, which integrated the complication without changing the 2.0mm proportions. However, the model lost the title for the world’s thinnest tourbillon in 2025 by Piaget’s fiercest competitor: Bulgari. 

Read More: Everything You Need to Know About Tourbillon Watches

Bulgari

Speaking of Bulgari, let’s take a spin down memory lane through the maison’s impressive 10 past and current world-record-holding watches. The year 2014 was a big one in the world of thin watches, with Bulgari creating the then-thinnest tourbillon with the Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Manual, whose movement measures just 1.95mm with an overall thickness of 5.0mm. 

Octo Finissimo Minute Repeater

Two years later, Bulgari introduced the Octo Finissimo Minute Repeater, which still holds the record for the thinnest minute repeater at 6.85mm thick, thanks to a 3.12mm movement. In 2017, the Roman maison released the Octo Finissimo Automatic, measuring 5.15mm with just 2.23mm for the movement (a record that has since been broken numerous times over for the thinnest automatic watch, but was then groundbreaking). In 2018, the brand added an automatic tourbillon to the lineup, with the caliber measuring 1.95mm and the watch measuring 3.95mm overall. Bulgari continued to keep things complicated in 2019 with the Octo Finissimo Chronograph GMT Automatic, marking the thinnest mechanical chronograph movement at 3.3mm, with an overall thickness of 6.9mm. Even in 2020, the watchmaker was able to churn out another record breaker: the thinnest tourbillon chronograph with a case of only 7.4mm in height and a movement of 3.5mm.

In 2021, Bulgari added the thinnest perpetual calendar to its repertoire with a caliber measuring 2.75mm thick and a case a mere 5.0mm in height. Then the brand got back to basics on a mission to outdo itself. In 2022, it launched the Octo Finissimo Ultra, the thinnest mechanical watch at the time, with razor-thin proportions of just 1.8mm. It was eclipsed later that year by Richard Mille — more on that below. Two years later, in 2024, came a COSC-certified iteration of the Ultra, which shaved 0.1mm off the original design while adding chronometer certification and knocking Richard Mille off the podium for the world’s thinnest mechanical watch. Finally, this year, Bulgari revealed the world’s thinnest tourbillon at an astounding 1.85mm thick.  

Richard Mille

Richard Mille is no stranger to a thin timepiece. The RM UP-01 Ferrari is one of the thinnest mechanical watches on the market, with an overall thickness of 1.75mm and a movement with a mind-blowing thinness of 1.18mm. The watch comes in collaboration with the famed Italian car company and achieves this truly remarkable slim build thanks to creating ultrathin components built in a more traditional layout, as opposed to Piaget and Bulgari’s integrated case and movement approach. Here, slimming down three elements was key: an extra-flat barrel (responsible for storing and releasing the energy that powers the movement), a superfine hairspring (which helps regulate the time like a pendulum in a clock), and a patented ultra-flat escapement (the bridge between the power source and the timekeeping components). It held the record for the thinnest watch in the world for two years. 

Konstantin Chaykin

Honorable mention goes to independent Konstantin Chaykin, who’s on the heels of Bulgari and is hungry to notch its first world record title. In 2024, the Russian maison unveiled the aptly named ThinKing, a working prototype watch with a thickness of only 1.65mm. The design borrows from the brand’s instantly recognizable Wristmon series, which features a face-like layout for the watch functions. For the ThinKing, Konstantin Chaykin borrowed a page from Piaget’s time-tested approach with the K.23-0 movement integrated directly into the case. It’s been nearly a year since the brand teased the working prototype; only time will tell if it makes it to production and earns the record of the world’s thinnest watch. 

The Thinnest Watches in the World

Brand	Model	Thickness	Year	Complication
1. Bulgari	Octo Finissimo Ultra	1.70mm	2024	Chronometer
2. Richard Mille	RM UP-01 Ferrari	1.75mm	2022	Time Only
3. Bulgari	Octo Finissimo Ultra	1.80mm	2022	Time Only
4. Bulgari	Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon	1.85mm	2025	Tourbillon
5. Piaget	Altiplano Ultimate Concept	2.00mm	2020	Time Only
6. Piaget	Altiplano Ultimate Concept Tourbillon	2.00mm	2024	Tourbillon
7. Piaget	Altiplano 900P	3.65mm	2014	Time Only
8. Bulgari	Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Automatic	3.95mm	2018	Automatic Tourbillon
9. Piaget	Altiplano Ultimate 910P	4.30mm	2017	Time Only
10. Bulgari	Octo Finissimo Perpetual Calendar	5.00mm	2021	Perpetual Calendar

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