Annual Calendar

Patek Philippe thrives in the world of watchmaking complications, and calendars watches are amongst our most distinctive. The simplest expression of a calendar in watchmaking is the date complication, which displays the current date, a number between 1 and 31, on the watch dial, either via an aperture or a hand. The date advances automatically at midnight each day, and the wearer needs only to manually adjust it at the end of each month with fewer than 31 days, which represents five months a year. The most famous of our “useful complications” is the annual calendar, invented and patented by Patek Philippe. Introduced in 1996, this mechanism provides an ingenious answer to the problem of date display. It indicates the date for months of 30 and 31 days and needs only one correction per year, at the end of February. The annual calendar is also combined with other complications such as moon phases, chronographs or minute repeaters.